“Better hope he doesn’t find that little girl,” Elijah said with a shake of his head. “That’s trouble if I’ve ever seen it.”

“Not really a little girl, is she? She’s old enough to have an archetype. And a class. None of the archetypes I know of have skills that help people steal,” Carmen said.

“She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen,” Elijah countered. “Plus, you saw her, right? I think little girl is an appropriate description.”

After the thief had disappeared, Miguel had left the build site to hunt the girl down. Elijah wasn’t sure if he was driven by admiration, attraction, or anger – all three were valid emotions for the boy – but he could tell that Miguel wasn’t going to give up until he’d searched every corner of Argos. It was almost endearing, how enthusiastically he’d taken to his chosen task.

“Do you think there’s a Thief class?” Carmen asked, standing beside Elijah and staring down the small hill upon which the would-be temple sat. “That’s kind of scary, if you think about it. People who specialize in taking things that don’t belong to them? What if someone chose that class just because it was the best they had available? Are they doomed to go down that path?”

Elijah shook his head. “No. Everything I’ve heard says that we get multiple chances to correct our progression,” he said. “Like you, for instance. I’d be willing to bet that you’ll get a chance to evolve your Blacksmith class into something else. Maybe a more generic crafter. You don’t have to take it. There’ll be more direct evolutions, too. But those are all meant to help you refine and customize your class to something that fits what you want to become.”

“Interesting. You know, when we first started, I thought this system was kind of simple. But then I started to see just how many classes there were,” Carmen mused. “Now, even those seemingly infinite classes will have multiple off-shoots. And I’m guessing even more than that the higher people go.”

“And that’s not even considering Specializations,” Elijah said. “I don’t really know much about them, but I think that’s what I’m going to ask about the next time I get to a Branch.”

“There’s one here,” Carmen reminded him.

“But no Librarian. Looking for information in that Knowledge Base without any guidance is like…”

“Finding a needle in a haystack while blindfolded.”

“And wearing gloves,” Elijah added.

“With a time limit.”

“Something like that,” he said with a chuckle. It felt good, just having a normal conversation that didn’t revolve around Alyssa’s death or what he’d done in Valoria. It was almost normal. But in the back of his mind, his guilt continued to roil. Hopefully, completing the temple – because that was what it had turned out to be, regardless of his initial intention – would help him move on.

Because he knew just how unhealthy it was to constantly dwell on the past.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Carmen asked.

Elijah didn’t need her to specify the subject. In truth, he didn’t know the answer to her question. The world was a dangerous place, and one where even the competent could fall at any given moment. Elijah intended to give his nephew every opportunity he could, though.

“I hope so,” he answered. “I’ve already talked to Nerthus about guiding Miggy’s cultivation, at least for the first step. It’ll take a lot of energy, especially if he’s not Nature attuned. But he’ll reach the first step in Body, Mind, and Soul cultivation before he gets a single level. The Core will be more difficult, and it’ll take a lot of time.”

Indeed, Elijah had skipped a step by having his Core advanced by the quest to rescue Sara the dragon. Most people had to engage in some variant of his current cycling. The first step was much easier than the second, but it was still a process that usually took months. On top of that, its efficacy would be much lower than his own Dragon Core – unless a member of some other elder race descended and gave Miguel a similar opportunity, which didn’t seem likely.

He asked, “How are you doing with cultivation?”

Carmen shook her head. “Poorly. My attunement is Creation. I haven’t found an appropriate environment yet.”

“Have you thought about making one?” asked Elijah.

“What?”

“I mean, take this temple, for instance,” he said. “You feel how thick the ethera is in here, don’t you?”

“Yeah. It feels a lot like your island. Or more like Druid’s Park.”

“But what if it didn’t?”

“Not following.”

“Imagine this. You get a bunch of this Dragonstone. Like, enough to build a whole smithy. You gather a ton of that metal Carissa and her dwarves are pulling out of that mine,” Elijah said. “Then, you refine it all before building that forge. Something big and impressive, with all the best materials you can find. Put your stamp on everything. Enchant every block. Make it yours. I’m willing to bet that will give you the environment you need to advance your cultivation.”

Then, he added, “Probably your apprentices, too.” He gestured to the half-finished building behind them. “This place is meant to be a monument to Alyssa. But what if it was dedicated to smithing? Crafting? I’ve thought a lot about this, and I think that’s how people normally do it. Like, if your attunement is Conflict, maybe you go to a battlefield. If it’s Nature, you go to a natural treasure or something like my grove. That sort of thing.”

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Carmen was silent for a moment before she said, “That makes a lot of sense.”

Elijah grinned. “I do that sometimes. Make sense, I mean. It’s not just all crazy ramblings all the time for me,” he said. “I can be serious, too. Once upon a time, I was a scientist, you know.”

“A bad one, from what I hear.”

“Well, yes. But I did do science. That has to count for something.”

She shook her head. “Do science? I don’t think that’s the right way to say it.”

He shrugged. “It gets the point across. Anyway – I need to get back to the tree. It’s not quite at the point where it can thrive on its own,” he said. “Plus, I want to make sure everything grows the way I want it to grow.”

“Can you guide it like that?” Carmen asked.

Elijah shrugged. “Sort of. I’m getting better at controlling things,” he said. Indeed, his time spent in the courtyard hadn’t been idly spent. In the past, he’d simply sat in the middle of his grove and flared Nature’s Bounty as well as One with Nature. However, with the temple courtyard, he’d chosen to experiment a little while he tried to encourage some aspects of growth while discouraging others.

His inspiration was, of course, Nerthus. The spyrggen could guide growth in the grove right down to the last detail. It wasn’t artificial like a man-made garden, but it certainly wasn’t wild, either. Elijah felt that figuring all of that out was the key to understanding the nurturing aspect of his archetype.

So far, his efforts in the temple had felt clumsy, but they had borne some small fruit as well. Of course, he knew he still had a long way to go, but so long as he made some progress, he was happy.

With that in mind, he completed his conversation with Carmen and returned to the courtyard. It looked very different than it had in the beginning. Instead of bare ground, it now sported thick grass, juvenile bushes, and vines – which had sprouted from the seeds Elijah had gotten from Nerthus – that had begun to snake around the finished columns. However, instead of hiding the results of Carmen’s efforts, those vines accentuated the serpentine nature of her carved dragons, making them look alive.

But that was only the beginning.

Elijah had taken more than a few cues from Nerthus’ design sensibilities, and he’d incorporated them into the project. Hopefully, it would turn out like the picture he held in his imagination. Or failing that, at least it would come close.

The tree in the center of the courtyard was only a sapling, but he knew from experience just how quickly it could grow to maturity. Eventually, it would tower above the building, covering the roof with its branches.

But that would take months.

Perhaps years.

The ancestral tree in his grove hadn’t reached that point until after he’d made contact with Ironshore, and that was with the benefit of the thick ethera in the grove. The off-shoots would take longer.

That was okay, though. Trees functioned on their own timelines, after all.

So, Elijah paced around the courtyard, constantly flaring his abilities as he physically guided the growth of the vines. In the past, he might have considered it tedious, but there was a certain comfort in gardening that he’d never before felt. Perhaps that was his archetype at work. Or his attunement. But it could just as easily be the personality changes he’d experienced over the past few years. Some of that was prompted by Earth’s transformation, but a lot could be chalked up to simple maturity.

Back in Hawaii, he’d yet to fully embrace adulthood. But he’d grown quite a lot since then.

“Over thirty years old, and I’m just now considering myself an adult,” he muttered to himself with a shake of his head.

Like that, days passed. When he needed rest, Elijah slept. When he needed to eat, he descended into the city and found something delicious. At times, he reminisced with Carmen or spoke with Miguel about his future. He even got to know Colt, who seemed to have, at some point, picked up a truly impressive cowboy hat. It fit him well, especially with the armor Elijah had returned to him.

But most of all, Elijah focused on guiding the courtyard’s and the tree’s growth. Meanwhile, Carmen bent the whole of her focus toward carving each of the columns. Sometimes, Elijah heard her muttering about enchantments and intent, but he only understood about half of what she said. And even that didn’t make a lot of sense to him. Regardless, she seemed completely engrossed in the project, which he considered a very good thing.

And finally, Miguel continued to search for the little thief. On a few occasions, Elijah noticed that the young man had picked up a few scrapes or bruises, but he’d pointedly looked the other way on those occasions. So did Carmen, recognizing that Miguel wasn’t truly injured. More, she clearly knew that the search was good for him, even if she and Elijah both knew that it would likely end in frustration.

Still, Elijah would only worry about that if it proved necessary. For now, Miguel wasn’t in any real danger, so Elijah focused on his task.

And slowly, things took shape. Even as Elijah and Carmen worked on courtyard, the Builders and Sculptors hammered the rest of the temple into shape. Once the structure itself was finished, they started working on the hill, creating a terraced slope through which a set of broad steps cut.

Those terraces bore more flora, though not of the sort that Elijah would grow. Instead, the landscaping was mostly mundane, though Elijah did take a day or two to ensure that everything took root before returning to his true project.

And after almost three weeks of work, once Carmen had finished her carvings, Elijah deemed the courtyard to be finished. With a sigh, he took a step back and looked everything over.

“Do you think it’s done?” asked Carmen, standing next to him.

Elijah closed his eyes and felt the ambient ethera. It was thick, though not nearly as dense as what he’d find even in Ironshore. But that was predictable. Once the ancestral tree sapling connected to its progenitor, the ethera would grow denser. Either way, Elijah was more concerned with how it felt.

There was plenty of nature there. But there was something else that he couldn’t quite identify. Something that felt, for lack of a better way to put it, like Alyssa. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what that meant, but he knew it to be true.

“I think so,” he said, opening his eyes.

The moment the words left his mouth, a new notification flashed before his inner eye. When he read it, he couldn’t stop the sad smile from turning up the corners of his mouth.

“You got it, too, didn’t you?” Carmen asked.

“I did.”

“This is what you had in mind, isn’t it?”

“It is. She deserves it,” Elijah said. “There’s more to it, though. Now that the temple is finished, I intend to make an announcement to the people of Argos.”

“We should throw a party,” Carmen said. “A feast. A huge banquet.”

“That was kind of what I had in mind,” Elijah said. “Alyssa always hated parties, though.”

Carmen shook her head. “You didn’t know her as well as you thought you did. Or maybe she just grew up.”

“That’s…fair. I wish I had spent more time with her. But –”

“This isn’t the time for regrets,” Carmen said. “This is a time for celebration. Of her life. Of what she stood for. That’s what this is all about, right? Honoring the person she was. Don’t let your regrets stain it.”

Elijah wanted to argue that he had every right to give voice to his issues. However, it only took one look at the notification for him to swallow his selfish words. Instead, he just said, “You’re right. A party would be nice.”