A few days ago:

Jack was exhausted. The years had taken a toll on him, and they had not been kind. Living on a planet in the early iron age would have been difficult for anyone, but to do so with a bad leg, a missing eye, and a heavy heart would generally have been a death sentence. Thankfully, he had his family and close friends to love and support him, none more so than S'haar herself.

The warrior woman was his constant companion. She ate when he ate, she slept when he slept, and she was near at hand during all hours of the day, baring the times she set aside for martial practice and meeting with various leaders of her kingdom. At first, Jack had sat in on those audiences to offer suggestions and advice when needed, but as time passed and everyone grew accustomed to the benefits of a unified nation, his advice was needed less and less frequently. So at his suggestion, Em'brel had taken his place as she was more than up to the task, and as Jack liked to say, "It'll be good practice!" Though when she asked, he never clarified what she was practicing for.

There had been a brief period when he'd gone to check out the cave, and S'haar stayed back at court, but once he made his determination of the viability of the excavation, Fea'en had led a group of workers to establish an outpost at the foot of the mountain, and over a year the Dragon's outpost had been born anew from the ashes, with one crucial difference. Now a large gathering hall stood at the center for S'haar to hold her audiences. Many nobles had been somewhat disgruntled over having to travel to a mere outpost, but it quickly became apparent that this little outpost was the pinnacle of comfort and organization the land had to offer.

Most of the villages had grown organically from a few families gathered around a central point, and as more people joined or grew up, the village just expanded outward, with everything ending up a chaotic spiraling mess. Over time, an effort had been put into creating some order from the chaos, often involving noisy and/or unpleasantly fragrant jobs like iron and leather work being shunted off to unpopulated areas and old homes in the center being taken down in favor of more necessary buildings like inns and gathering sites for protection from the cold, as well as the village Lord's homes. However, each village was still a unique mess that only those who grew up there ever really knew their way around.

Jack noted that the Dragon's Ooutpost was different as he walked through the living center toward his cave. It had been designed with a large population in mind from the get-go. The streets were laid out in a grid formation and were far broader than necessary in anticipation of more significant traffic to come. The "inn" was a massive complex of rooms angled around a large dining hall, able to house every visiting noble in comfort that often surpassed their homes. They had wells and flowing water pumped throughout the outpost to bathhouses by windmills based on Em'brel's original design. Jack had heard that many village lords were looking to the outpost as a source of inspiration for how to craft their villages going forward.

As he walked passed the crafting quarter, Jack grinned, thinking about how his dream of the outpost being a place people came to learn had come true. Tel'ron and Jan'kul led their respective masteries from within buildings that were almost shrines to their crafts, filled with every tool, amenity, and resource a craft master could dream of. And if a woodworker was especially lucky, he might get berated by the "retired" craft master, Fea'en, who still poked her snout in occasionally to see how the kids were doing. To be invited to be an apprentice in the halls of the Dragon's Outpost was both feared and coveted, as it was said to be the most challenging training in the land, but those that earned the title of "competent" by the legendary masters were in high demand in any and all villages.

Jack nodded to a passing guard, who nodded back, as the human remembered how there had been a question of safety. After all, how could such a small outpost guarantee the protection of the queen, as well as all the nobles who came to her court? However, not only were the Queen's Guards the best armed and armored guards in the land, each with fitted leather armor like the one S'haar had worn in the great battle and spears and swords made from the purest ore in the land, but they were also the best trained. Lack'nul drilled those under his command as Ger'ron of old had, not only instilling mastery of the basics through countless hours of repetition but also by ensuring his guards were trained in the use of every dirty, underhanded trick they might need in a life-or-death situation. If that wasn't enough, the now legendary S'haar also joined in for daily practice, often taking on two or three of the best warriors they had to offer to keep her blades and wits as sharp as ever. It was considered a great honor to be chosen as an opponent for the queen, with Lack'nul himself being given the greatest honor of a one-on-one duel every ten days.

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Jack grinned as he remembered the day Lack'nul had made the biggest mistake of his life. During a particularly heated duel, he found a gap in S'haar's defense when she'd improvised a new move she'd been practicing, and for the first time, the leader of the Queen's Guard drew blood from his regent. He immediately knelt and begged forgiveness, but S'haar had only grinned evilly and loudly proclaimed, "Well, it seems you've gotten better! Now I can stop holding back as much!" Later, Lack'nul had confided in Jack that since that day, his duels with S'haar felt like a constant fight for his life. However, based on the rumors working around the outpost, Lack'nul was now considered the second most accomplished warrior in the land by a wide margin. He could easily handle any other self-proclaimed blade master who visited the outpost, so his "life or death" duels with S'haar were evidently paying off. Besides, Jack was reasonably confident S'haar wasn't actually trying to take her guard captain's life.

As he neared his cave, Jack nodded to his escort, Orth'kun today, the more oversized guard from Lack'nul's village. The huge argu'n grinned. "Time for more of that mysterious wizard stuff you do in your cave? Gonna invent some way for us to fly this time?"

Jack chuckled. "Oh, that one is still a little way down the road. Though I suppose I could teach you all how to make hang gliders. It's not technically flying, but it'll let you glide for miles or more if you hop down from a high enough peak. From the mountain here, you might even be able to get all the way to Jack'haar!"

The large guard looked skeptical but laughed anyway. "You're saying we could jump off the top of this mountain and end up in the village? I'd say you're crazy, but we all already know that!"

Jack grinned back before growing more sober. "Well, I'm afraid it's nothing like that today. I'm probably just running down another dead end, but I won't know until I try. You can wait out here where it's warmer. There's only one way in and out, after all!"

The guard shook his head. "No can do, wizard man! The boss said I'm to be within sight of you at all times! Someone could have snuck in there when no one was looking after all. No worries though, I got plenty of warming stones, and you made it so I can set up a fire in there to keep em nice and hot. I'll just practice with my spear while you work or something!"

Jack shrugged. "As you like."

It wasn't hard to find his way in the dark. The path was well worn from over a year of walking back and forth, though his leg did ache a little more in the cold of the cave. But what really bothered him was that in the silent darkness of the cave, the faces still followed him. Over the years, many of them had blurred a little as Jack's memories of the argu'n he'd killed faded over time, but there was still one as fresh as ever. That damn kid from the night raid to save Em'brel. They didn't really talk anymore and mostly stayed off to the side, which was nice, but they always seemed to be watching the human, judging him. Closing his eyes didn't help. If anything, it only strengthened their presence. Jack just had to fight the urge to talk to them when he had someone with him. It wouldn't do to make them think he was even crazier than most of them already thought he was.

Jack often wondered just how crazy he was. Visual hallucinations were definitely a bad sign, but no one seemed too bothered by him, chalking his eccentricities up to him being a wizard. And to be fair, it all seemed to go away when he was with S'haar or Bar'ela. Something about their presence soothed his soul in a way that nothing else did, but there was something too important for him to do that made it so he couldn't avoid the dark, cold cave.

Jack arrived at the little shack he'd constructed outside the remnants of his old ship. The ship was no longer habitable by any stretch of the imagination, but there were still parts and components that were relatively intact, and more importantly, some of the databases still seemed to function.

As he sat down in a chair, with the remnants of Angela's body off to one side, a pile of components he's scavenged from the ship to the other, and the case that had once contained Vox'thon on the table in front of him, Jack sighed. Like he'd told Orth'kun, this was probably going to be just another dead end, like so, so many others before, but he's stick to this for years if he had to.

Jack replaced the battery he'd left to keep power running to his makeshift computer. The solar panels from Angela's old rig could power everything he'd cobbled together indefinitely. He remembered one of his old teachers telling him he had a talent for computer science and that he could pursue a career in the field. Right now, he wished he'd done just that, but then again, if he had, he would have never come out here, and that comet would have taken out S'haar and her people without him ever knowing they existed at all. Still, those skills would come in handy right now. While he was at it, he also wished he was half the programmer his father had been. Too much of what he was looking at made little to no sense to him. It was clear some of Vox'thon's data was mixed with Angela's, but it was near impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Not to mention there was a world of difference between just recovering his sister's memories and bringing her back to life. A lot of his work was messy patchwork that he hoped would have some semblance of functionality.

Still, there was only one way to find out if it worked. Jack closed his eyes, took a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it out. Then, opening his eyes, he plugged in the makeshift monitor he'd created from a screen in the ship. As it came to life, what Jack read made him frown. That was odd...