The huddled villagers got a fire going, after using magic to help wick away water from their wood and belongings. Arlen hadn't even thought of that. Even his tail felt sodden and heavy until he let them fling a spell across it, making the new appendage twitch and tickle his backside. He blushed.

As the refugee group began to calm down and warm themselves, they had time for questions. "How are you doing this? How much can you make? Are you going to fight Thoko?"

He didn't have full answers, any more than he had the power to rescue whatever property was getting blown away by the hurricane. He cleared folks out of one corner and shaped the stone floor into a bench, then a table. "I don't know yet. Thoko's been hurting everyone, so that needs to stop before we have peace."

A frightened young man said, "Our crops..."

The islanders were going to be even more dependent on fish for a while, unless Arlen learned quickly how to make food from rocks. Every field in the Echoing Isles might have been threshed prematurely if the storm was big enough.

Arlen's eyes widened. He had no way to prove it yet, but intuition told him to worry about the Roaring Storm itself. He peeked outside and saw no change to the fury. Maybe the whole barrier had become a permanent fixture right where people lived. For now there was nothing to do but practice. He chose a point just outside, mentally gripped it, and made a low block of stone. Then, he shaped and transmuted it at the same time like squeezing clay and hoping to make diamonds. He imagined the intended shape carefully. It became real: an iron breastplate in a simple one-piece style with hooks for attaching straps. He darted out into the rain to fetch it. Fog coiled around the new armor.

He said, "This can protect you from any spear, stone, ice dart, claw or fang your enemies might strike you with. Though I'd avoid fighting shockjaws while wearing it. I can make as many as you need, probably with a better design and tailored for you, and iron weapons to match."

By the time the storm lessened, hours later, Arlen had set the displaced islanders up with a board game of colored stones at a stone table, and was debating the merits of swords and spears as he slowly conjured an arsenal.

The Catacomb chief hobbled in, bent slightly under the wind and rain. "Spirits' mercy! At last it's fading. What is all this?"

"Your new defenses," said Arlen. "I can't feed you, but if there are more raiders, your most vulnerable people can shelter in a building like this. With new weapons."

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The chief shut her eyes. "New ways of killing. Before the hostages' rescue we were at least not fighting."

Meadow objected. "Because you had to do whatever Thoko said! What's a little fighting, to get our freedom back?"

"Child, you've only ever killed ancient rock creatures. You aren't a man or a warrior. Arlen, you've drawn blood against raiders on Opaline, yes? Tell young Meadow how wonderful a real battle is."

Arlen sighed. "Meadow, and everyone, your chief is right to want to avoid killing anyone. I believe that with my gifts, I can make you strong enough that Thoko will see you can't be beaten, and will make peace. He's no fool. Will you accept my help?"

The chief said, "We already have. I would much prefer having you build us sturdier houses and better fishing boats to replace any we just lost. We'll need to fish especially hard for a while."

"I'll see what I can do. But I need to check in with Opaline too and make sure they're well defended."

He spent the evening there, by which time the storm's rage had faded to a drizzle. He had gone around to a dozen wind-ravaged huts and put new, tidy stone cottages in their place with raised floors, solid roofs, and built-in seats and shelves. The people had more living space than before. He offered to improve the primitive stone vault of the chief to make it remain the most impressive building in town, but she waved the offer off for now.

He'd also made iron breastplates and spearheads for ten soldiers, in case of more trouble. And lastly, a coastal lookout tower. It stood about forty feet tall, following the natural inclination of his powers to work with a unit he thought of as roughly a twenty-foot cube. Any medieval European noble would recognize it as a respectable basic guard post with a raised upper wall and slit windows. Two stories high with a top trapdoor. No mundane weapon of the islanders could breach it anywhere but the door, which he left as an exercise for the owners to build. Magic could drill into the stone, but so far as he knew, nobody else could do it quickly. He'd spent only half an hour conjuring this little tower, and some of that was fiddling with the windows and other details.

Such as the stairs. The islanders barely understood what a staircase was. Even after getting past that discussion they were confused. "This isn't how we fight," one man said.

"You have someone sit up top and watch for trouble at sea, and then people can hide inside. I would put archers up there too, but that's your decision."

He had to leave the island and try tending to Opaline. He set out by late morning but saw Meadow running up to his borrowed boat. "Take me with you! I want to see what's going on."

"Don't you have more work to do with the golems and the ruins?"

She looked spooked. "Nobody's seen the golems move since the storm. I haven't tried going back into the Catacomb but now I wonder if it's shut down, sealed off. It was something you did, Arlen. You found something big and now the whole world is holding its breath. I want to see what happens and make sure it's all right."

Though he worried, too, he could understand her wanting to do something about the chaos instead of waiting. "Get in."