February, March, April…I was getting bored and took 6 golems to Camelot in mid-April. The town had grown. It wasn’t pretty with quickly built buildings and had maybe 400 people. A Spanish ship was docked on a shabby wooden pier. I decided to make a stone pier for ships and got the golems working on bringing stone. Most of the people had not seen the golems yet. As I fused stone and extended the pier I talked with the mayor. He asked about taxes and other town management topics. I referred him to Amelia. He should travel to Avalon and speak with her to get organized. I would build the pier big enough to dock two ships on each side. He asked about the warehouse building I had built. Could the town use it? No. I would build them a stone building. What did he want? He thought for a bit then said a barracks for 50 men with an office for the magistrate. Keeping the fast growing population under control was his biggest problem. He had 15 police but needed more. It took 3 weeks to finish the 200’ pier that was 20’ wide. It was nice having tireless golems that could carry 600 lb stones. It took two weeks for the barracks get finished and people liked watching me use my magic. It ended being a stone building that was 40’x120’. The first floor had 10 rooms that were 15’x20’ with a 10’ hallway down the center. Each room could have 4 bunk beds. One room was the privy which meant 72 men could occupy the building. The second floor was half a 40’x60’ dining/kitchen and the other half had 6 small rooms that the mayor could figure out uses for. The partial basement had 16 cells that were 10’x10’. My ships arrived with 160 settlers. I explained there were three options for them, Camelot, Pendragon and Avalon. Avalon would assign them work and a salary, in Pendragon they were in the wilderness and had to build their own way, here in Camelot it was what they could see. I talked briefly with both my captains. They loved the stone pier; it made offloading and loading quicker. They had been attacked twice this trip but together their cannons chased off the attackers. Things were getting sticky overseas. I told them to go to Ireland this trip. The English oppression was great so they could load quickly and depart. I would be here ready to leave when they returned.

That done I returned to Avalon. On the way I stopped and repaired the road and paved a few sections when rock was nearby. It was me procrastinating my return and it took two weeks to get back to Avalon. I had a long list of things to do when I got back from Amelia who said she was ready to move out. Designing and building the mayor’s house was now a priority too. Renee, Ella and Carina were all showing.

I sat down with my two architects and worked on the mayor’s mansion. We decided it would be built to the south of the park/commons. It would cover 4 acres and have a 12’ wall around it with a single gate. The building itself would be three stories in the center of the property with the first floor being for functions and small offices, the second floor would be records and major offices and the third floor would be living area for the mayor. It would have 14 bedrooms and 8 other large functional rooms. There would be a full basement as well that would house the cities armory for the immediate future. It would take three years to build so I scheduled a small house on the corner of the property with three bedrooms with an eye to convert it to a soldier barracks in the future for 14 men.

It was the beginning of July and I found in meditation I had six spell points so I went and learned the spell cure disease. I opened my mind and sorted the knowledge and formulated the spell. I was a little disappointed as the spell just eliminated bacteria and virus. It didn’t cure cancer or repair the damage from disease.

* Cure Disease, Level 1 (0/100) (Healing Spell – tier 3) – cures one person of disease, each level reduces the casting time, COST: 3

I went through town and used the spell ten times to get a feel for it on sick people and healthy people. It was weird their body appeared in my mind and I could identify all the harmful bacteria and virus and then I could just snuff them out in about 40 seconds. Healthy people had bacteria in their gut that I could eliminate if I choose to. I was now a miracle worker in town.

A hurricane blew through at the end of July. I was happy our preparations worked extremely well. The dam held and the lake filled to capacity so we needed to extend the height. By mid August I had reached my quota of 100,000 coins mostly due to the fact we now had 6 women pressing coins in molds. On a long night we were making 3,000 coins. I switched to only making coins one night a week.

In August I started preparing for my trip. I had 14 5 gallon barrels for gems. 12 would be for raw purified gems. The other two were for cut gems. We had colored pouches that matched the gem color inside. I decided to bring 6 golems. The improved intelligence made them able to wield weapons now, not that they needed them. Riona was adamant that she was coming. She could cast her mini fireballs extremely fast now and at full magic she could cast 22 fireballs in less than 9 seconds. I would need to make knives, daggers and sabers as well for trade. I hoped we could take oranges and limes as well to trade.

I had a talk with Riona and learned she wasn’t attracted to me, she looked up to me and maybe loved me but not sexually. She was attracted to woman and was confused. I said it was ok, she would have to find another woman who was also inclined so and she could be happy. The only negative to this trip was that I was going to miss the birth of the new children.

I left in a cart that had rough springs with my cargo. I had 70 sabers and my 14 barrels of gems. I would make more stone weapons on the sea voyage. I wasn’t sure about selling light stones.

The ships arrived after I had waited two weeks in Camelot helping pave the streets. We loaded my cart, a few crates of oranges and limes and 14 tons of stones and left on October 3rd. My remaining smart golems should be good enough to protect Avalon. The trip was good and we even outran a storm coming from the south. My days were boring, all work. My only fun was making some green, red and violet light stones. My cure disease spell came in useful. I found in the few years they had operated for me they had last 27 men between the two ships to disease. I found about 60% of the crew had some disease or another. When we got to the straights there were six ships engaged in a battle. Two French, 3 Spanish and a Portuguese. One of the Spanish was a merchant ship. My captains bunched together as we passed.

There was a lot of traffic in the sea. We moved along the north coast and then veered toward Sicily. We needed to resupply so I decided to have one ship wait while another docked in Athens. I only brought a few pounds of silver bars so I was going to have trade gems in Athens. When we docked I had two crew that spoke Greek go with me. I found a bulk merchant and paid in small pea sized raw gems for 5 months of supplies for the two ships. I asked about antiques for sale as I was a collector. After some back and forth, some wine and snacks we went to a prepared exhibition at a villa. He had paintings, statures, jewelry and dozens of coins from around the world. It took three hours of negotiation and I got all the coins, four paintings and six statues. All the art was old, the paintings were at least 100 years old and I think the statues were even older. It cost me three fist sized raw gems and he added two hundred local silver coins on top. I had descriptive receipts drawn up and got them on the ship. I was invited to dine that evening and brought Riona. Athens was part of the Ottoman Empire so I asked about Constantinople which was actually sometimes called Istanbul now. My host was interested in coming with me as our meeting had been quite profitable so far. We negotiated travel for him and 3 of his men on the other ship. Two days later I left Athens and transferred them to the other ship at sea.

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It was actually good we had them as they helped get us past patrol ships to the city. I was actually nervous as the water seemed well defended. Our guest got us good space for price on the dock and I had him broker the sale of the 200 knives, 120 daggers, 300 sabers and crates of citrus fruit for 10% commission. I decided to explore the city with Riona and four guards and a translator. There were a lot of slaves. It was crazy. I felt nauseous. I cured some beggars of disease as we walked. We circled the market and I bought some small silk bolts of cloth. I found a spice shop and went in and got some seeds to grow my own spices and a cask of some strong tea I sampled. I tipped the guards and translator when we got back to the ship. That night my golems caught two thieves on the ship. Worried my other ship might have issues I had one golem move to that ship for security. The thieves were held in the hold. I would release them when we left. The next day in the afternoon I met three perspective buyers for my weapons with the broker on the deck of my ship. They buyers inspected the weapons and asked questions about the manufacture of the weapons. I said it was a secret process. They asked to test them and I agreed. The tested them vs steel then each other. No marks of the blade or loss of sharpness. Then they tried to break a saber by jumping on it. It didn’t break. The saber stone was slightly heavier than steel. Then my broker got the bidding going. I had all the crates brought up and drinks brought out as they inspected to make sure then were all good. Soon they started bidding in their language and it quickly got hot. My broker said all three men were very wealthy and had their own guards so the weapons of this quality would be a status symbol. As the bidding slowed the sum was extremely impressive and to sweeten his bid he added 14 of his slaves. I could choose any in his estate outside of his personal slaves. I took the offer. On a whim I said I had a set of items they may be interested in and brought out 4 light stones of varying color. They passed them around and my broker talked to them as they bid. I said the light would last about a year even though it was closer to 55. I was shocked when the coin for them was half that of the weapons. We waited three hours for the chest of coins to be delivered. After the delivery my broker took his 10%. I then travelled to the estate to pick my slaves. They would be the lucky ones as they would be freed. The winner was actual a slave trader and it gave me a bad impression. There were 200+ slaves in the pens for auction and another 30 on the estate. Riona and two of my biggest marines had come with me. The slaves ranged from black to arab to Asian to Caucasian. He said I could pick any 14 and had the clean ‘broken’ slaves line up. I walked the line with Riona and she whispered two of the women triggered her magic sense. I had to focus but felt it too. One was an old woman and the other younger but looked the same…maybe a daughter. I pulled those two out of the line. We went to the pens and she found another women with a tiny amount of magic. For the remaining 11 selections I pulled 3 of the strongest looking males and 8 women between the age of 16 and 20. We had dinner in the estate and I could see his private slaves were selected for their beauty. The meal was good and we returned to the ship with the slaves. I set the slaves in the hold and got them new clothes and food. I then got three sailors to start on teaching them English and I moved two golems to guard them which scared them.

The next day I got my guest to take 70% of the coins I had earned and two bags of small cut gems. One bag of gems was for him and the rest was for luxury goods and art work. I gave him a brief run down what I wanted for art. I took 4 guards and 4 marines and Riona. We were going to go to the slave markets looking for people with magic. We went to nine markets and found 1 old women, 2 middle aged woman, 1 teenage women and 2 children. I added three boys who were related to the children and the teenager. I found it weird no men with magic were found so far. I returned to my ship and sent out my broker to get almond and cashew tree cuttings. He had my cargo being delivered in the morning. We had caught at least one person every night on the ships so I wanted to sail soon. My broker had secured fair on another ship to return to Athens. In the morning I went to the slave market without Riona. I purchased 27 men, 12 women and 18 children. They were a mix of the tallest black, Caucasian and Arabs. I returned to my ships and the cargo was being loaded. Three hours later we were sailing and kicked the 7 men who had come abroad at night overboard. They had to swim 100 yards to shore but that was their problem.

We took the chains off the slaves and talked to them, saying they were going to America and could start a new life there. I transferred the 30 men to the other ship with 1 golem there. It made the sleeping arrangements easier. Three days later we of course were being pursued but had already made it through the straight to the isles of Greece. The thing was this time we had Riona. She could hold her small fireballs together for a good 600 yards and then splashed on the sails. A few sails going up in flames caused them to turn off.

In the isles we had some oared ships come at us briefly that turned off after a few fireballs. I breathed relief as we passed the tip of Greece. The winds favored us. It was two weeks later that we approached the straits of Gibraltar. Once again there were ships dancing in combat. Since we had two galleons with cannons none veered to engage us. We didn’t even get close enough to identify them.

The ocean greeted us with stormy seas. We made port on an island that seemed uninhabited. We explored the island and found a modest village. They were Portuguese. We traded with them while we waited two days for the storm to pass. Two of the freed slaves asked to stay and I let them. I cured seven inhabitants of illness and grew 17 orange trees. Riona didn’t find anyone with magic. We left and passed more islands before getting to the open ocean. The freed slaves finely believed they were free and I talked to them all in their broken English. They had a month to learn more English proficiency.

Riona’s magic sense ability had evolved. She could now estimate a person’s magic pool. None of the people we had picked up had over 6. Riona herself had reached 12. She guessed mine at 170 but it was hard since I shined so bright. I could tell she was aspiring to match my power.

I learned about my magic in deep meditation as well. Apparently I had been given all the knowledge of common spells. When I had enough spell points I could bring that knowledge to the forefront and learn the spell. That meant everyone else was going through spell formation blind. I sat down and managed to write out the 34 spheres of magic and the spells associated with each. I put as much information as I could with what my mind could access. I also determined spell affinities. There was greater and lessor. A greater affinity cost 10 spell points to learn and reduced spell cost and accelerated leveling. A lessor affinity cost 5 and just reduced the learning cost of spells. I didn’t have a knowledge of abilities no matter how hard I tried but I wrote down what I remembered when I selected mine. I would call this book the “Universal Tome of the Magical”. It should help guide future mages. Riona was still learning to read but I was certain she had an affinity for fire magic. Were all people with magic born with an affinity? I asked Riona to work to develop her sense skill further to identify a person’s affinity. She had basically had her sense magic skill active all the time since she had learned it.