Arlen and Meadow sailed to Opaline to check on the damage and bring what help they could. The sea had become eerily calm and the sky had cleared to reveal blazing sun. Arlen had requested and gotten a broad-brimmed hat made by a basket weaver who thought it was a silly idea, but was now thinking about making more.

Once they were well on the way, Arlen said, "Your chief thinks this is all the spirits' doing. I want to get their opinion again when I can."

"You said yourself, Thoko still needs to stop what he's doing."

"Yeah. I hope we can all be on the same page... er, all riding the same wave." He sailed quietly for a while. "Whatever the Builders were doing, it's something that can benefit the islands now."

Meadow said, "I've never seen someone change stone into something else. Didn't want to say it while we were there, but that's not normal magic."

Their boat was a basic canoe with a small sail and an outrigger. "I wonder what the limits are." He concentrated on the wooden hull but couldn't seem to transform it, nor to make more wood from nothing. "I'll try more later."

In time they arrived on the shore of Opaline. The beach was littered with branches and seaweed. A sentry boater was just setting out to sea when he spotted the pair. Arlen waved and rode to the shallows.

The chief sent for him right away, but didn't receive him in the longhouse. Arlen soon realized why: the two-story building of thatch and wood had been damaged so much in the storm that nobody trusted it. Instead he'd taken over a makeshift canopy of sailcloth and branches.

The chief had his throne but no high platform to sit on. "What did you find in that land of twisting tunnels?"

"Something amazing." Arlen held up a stone he'd picked up, then changed it into iron. "And that's not all."

Meadow had come along. "He can make a stone house in minutes."

The chief startled and took the iron lump. "I don't understand. Did you ally with Catacomb? Did they give you some new spell?"

"I convinced them to help resist Thoko. This new power is something I found in the old Builder place."

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"Wait, let me get a closer look at you. You've changed!"

He made Arlen climb up to be inspected again. The chief laughed. "I suppose that's a blessing. So you have iron. You will give us metal weapons?"

"All that you want. I'll show you."

The chief left his little pavilion to watch Arlen demonstrate. Other islanders peeked from all around. Arlen conjured up another iron breastplate in under a minute, then tried putting it on, and found he could make the material flow and adjust as needed. "Can someone tie this to me with rope?"

Once he'd donned it, he thought better of his testing plans and put the plate onto a prepared stone pillar like a mannequin. "Someone try stabbing it, as hard as you can."

A spearman ran screaming at it, and shattered his obsidian blade with only a nick in the metal to show for his effort. Another man stabbed it and a third struck with a club.

Arlen cautioned, "Against clubs you'll want some padded cloth or something underneath. And of course it doesn't cover your whole body. But I can give you an iron hat, and iron blades and arrowheads. Now, for defenses, recall what I was saying about trenches and pits..."

He created a twenty-by-twenty foundation and began stretching it around him into another coastal sentry tower.

The chief was speechless at first. Then one villager said, "This isn't the spirits' power."

Another murmured, "This isn't how we fight."

The chief seemed to share their mood. "Arlen, stop that. This is too strange. No one has this kind of power, out of nowhere. The spirits trust one of us with magic gradually, revealing more over many years."

An islander said, "He's an outsider."

Meadow told him, "He's been changed! He's one of us now."

Arlen said, "I'm trying to protect you all from being conquered again or killed by raiders. Let me give you good equipment and walls and towers. When Thoko comes again he'll know you can't be beaten."

The chief shook his head. "This isn't normal. I don't trust any of it."

"I'm trying to save your lives and your freedom!"

A woman called out, "By telling us what to do. By making us fight with dead iron like Mirefolk and Newshore exiles."

"Exile weapons," grumbled another man. The iron tools were like what they had on that island of ghosts.

Arlen said, "The spirits approve of what I'm doing. Can't you see I even have a tail now?"

The chief said, "I don't know anymore. That storm could've been a sign of their anger. I would go to Gull Crater to seek answers from them, but I'm needed here for defense."

"Then I'll go."

"And I should trust you to come back and report that they said everything you're doing is all right?"

Arlen glared at the big man. "Yes. You showed me hospitality when I first arrived, and I want to help you. If the spirits tell me not to, then I won't come back. Maybe Thoko will still want me."

He grimaced. "Then may the spirits find you acceptable, Arlen."

He spent the evening there, and the man who'd broken his spearpoint asked for Arlen to make a replacement of iron. Arlen gave him two.

He was resting in his little guest hut, quietly forbidden from making a better one, when a boat arrived from the direction of Stormhowl. He paid it no attention at first but a commotion spread, bearing news:

The Roaring Storm that surrounded the islands was gone.