Within a few days, my new house was finished. Jaina had insisted that my abode was the first major project of her appointment. According to her reasoning, my status was a direct reflection upon the status of the community. In other words, the more put together I appeared the more that both our citizens and any visitors would believe in our strength. Even more importantly, her stance was that my home reflected upon the prosperity of New Lordaeron. She had a point, it would be hard for new folks to respect a person sleeping on the ground. They shouldn't knock it though, that purple grass was quite comfortable.

She had my new lair constructed higher up on the mountainside, an excellent position from which to oversee the town. The rest of the view was nice as well, or it would be once we brought more life back to the Badlands. While my new home was not the largest structure in our humble town, it was the most ornate. Jaina had discovered that the assemblers in the Forges and the Probes could output just about any material in any form. This was predicated on having a deep scan of the materials recorded. Then she had also discovered that they could apply pretty much any color to a material on a molecular scale. As a result, the outer walls of my new home were clad in gold veined blue marble blocks.

When I confronted her on those choices, she replied that everything looked not only impressively wealthy but was also beautiful. I certainly couldn't argue against that, I was just salty because I felt like a poser living in an opulent mini-palace. At least the inside was finished in more subdued rich dark woods. Solid seamless pieces of wood that would have been impossible normally.

My new Adjutant had really enjoyed utilizing the capabilities of Khalai manufacturing. Everything was engraved or enameled or embossed in scenes of my time in this world. Some areas had images of stories as told by Sally or Megan. I actually enjoyed looking at these specific versions of my tales given a visual form. Though they all painted me in a flattering light.

The footprint of the building wasn't as large as I had at first assumed, but my micro-palace was three stories of small scale majesty. The top floor was a suite of rooms centered around my bed and bathing rooms. A tiny library/den, a sitting room, a decently organized closet which was currently empty. Also a small armory slash workstation, for if the mood to tinker struck but I didn't have time to get to one of the Forges. The second floor was much the same, minus the armory, and set aside for important guests or dignitaries. The ground floor had the kitchen, but the majority of it was taken up by the Meeting Area. This room was totally "not" a modestly sized throne room. Yeah, my new rather large, not at all a throne, chair was at the very least pleasant to sit upon. A little too much gold embellishment for my tastes, and were those fucking rubies in the eyes of the wolves heads carved into the armrests. Yes. Yes they were.

At this point, I was wondering why the Khalai didn't just buy the human factions off. Upon reflection, it had probably never occurred to them. Both their unique physiology and advanced technology meant that material goods didn't matter to them. They didn't need food, they barely needed sleep. Their society was centered around honor and purpose, something humans had a hard time with living up to. If I could bring a fraction of their drive into my work, I'd be years ahead of where I was now. Was it any wonder they didn't understand how to deal with humans?

Enough contemplation, it was time to get some rest on my new giant, and very comfy bed, with the ladies. There was no pleasure so grand as having the company of two very lovely women in the bed with you. I highly recommend it.

The next day saw me working with Mr. Wick. He was running drills, and the cracks of gunfire happened so fast that it became one continuous sound. Mr. Wick was trying out a variety of guns I had assembled with him in mind. Using a variant on the Unity, he just put fourteen rounds into targets with near perfect accuracy, in about 4 seconds. To say he was impressive doesn't begin to cut it. No augments no superpowers, he was simply the product of endless fucking training and practice. I was excited to see what he could become. Dreams of him in a stealth suit while casting shadowy spells, danced in my mind.

He wasn't quite as stand offish as he had at first seemed. He was infallibly polite, dare I say pleasant. Yet, he never wasted words, and was always direct. He'd spent most of his time so far with Raynor and our troops, repeatedly running drills. We had even set him up a suit of power armor, while he performed amazingly in it, but didn't like wearing it.

He had this stare, that was his default look, and most people felt judged or terrified by it. After a week or so of exposure I can safely say, that feeling never goes away. But he didn't mean anything by it, that's just how he looks. He'd helped the troops get more accustomed to the new SORs and their sidearms. He even taught them better ways to move and fight outside their armor. Which begged the question, "What's wrong with it?" Worried about my latest design overhaul.

"Nothing. Need to feel the air. Better sense of the action." He shrugged. Interesting. I hoped any cyberware he chipped wouldn't screw him up.

"If you could change any one thing to make yourself better what would it be?" I waited with baited breath, what would he pick. Speed. Strength. What could elevate this legend to the another level?

"Better perception and reaction. Everything else can be trained, if you know what's going on, and understand it." Huh, now that was food for thought. I'd noticed everyone had a different answer for that question. I pondered who was right, or if this was an all of them were right situation.

Since Mr. Wick didn't want the power armor, I made him a new suit. Of course, in the same style as his pervious one, but I'd managed to not only improve the armor rating and get some shielding in place, I snuck in a cloaking field. Now, the cloaking wouldn't work for very long when not under a Psifield, but it might help him get out of a bad scene. Not that Mr. Wick even needed a cloaking field, he was impossibly good at going unnoticed to begin with. Which really screwed with my head the first time he snuck up on me. He radiated such an aura of death that you'd think it would be impossible to hide. That turned out to be wrong. He could dampen his presence to almost nothing, and it even affected his mana signature.

Jaina had started giving lessons in basic mana shaping to everyone who was interested. Not only was I there to see what was the same and different in her methods, but Mr. Wick was right beside me absorbing her lessons like a sponge. He said it was a another valuable tool for his collection. The though of him wielding shadows as weapons and just cursing folks to death was frightening. He might even end up with a literal death stare. What a lovely thought.

Megan, Sally and Jaina were becoming thick as thieves. I rarely saw them apart anymore, and while some part of me was a bit suspicious, I was mostly happy for them. They said that it was nice to have a woman around their own age, that didn't treat them like they were cyberpsychos. Hmm. I hadn't thought about that. I was glad they had a new friend, even if she was from a wholly different culture. Maybe some of her manners would rub off on them... nah. Any influence would probably run the other way. Suddenly, I was deeply worried for poor Jaina.

Our new Archmage was also fascinated by my healing abilities. Her mana couldn't quite be shaped that way, for some reason. To be fair, my mana had a hard time being shaped into a more focused damage spell. Sure, I could toss out raw mana blasts, but they were highly inefficient. Jaina was the same with healing. Sure, she could flood your body with mana and it helped with your body's own healing abilities, but no where near as well as my spells.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

As a side note, neither one of us was as affected by the mana of the other, as say Sally. Nor did Jaina's mana have as strong a pleasurable effect on folks as mine did. Folks still got some thrills out of her work, but it wouldn't be causing anyone to pass out anytime soon. She postulated that it had to do with the essence of our mana. Hers was all about water and ice, mine was all about nature. That said, she wanted to start deeper experiments once her tower was done. Towers were a requirement for Mages to really shine, she insisted. Just as a Druid must have a grove.

A what now?

A grove.

Meadran had mentioned something about that before, right? Now usually when one is speaking about a grove, it's a cluster of trees, often comprised of older more developed specimens. In this new mana based context, it had to mean something else. It invoked images of people out in a forest wearing their robes and doing... something mystical looking. Dancing maybe. I think I'd heard of them in relation to the Gauls or Celts, when the Romans were conquering them. They burned their groves down, if I'm recalling it right. Why would they have done that?

To destroy a symbol, perhaps. A symbol of what? Gods? Culture? Nature itself? I had no idea. I was never very interested in that period of history other than that, Romans, for all their faults, were very excellent engineers. Even if they had stolen a lot of their ideas and culture from others, they certainly made a few wonders.

I also had the impression that the Druids of those days and the Druids of Azeroth were only tangentially related. But in either case, trees were involved I was sure of that much. So who better to ask than a tree. I still didn't want to bother Meadran, but maybe Faergin would be able to point me in the right direction. If I could find him.

One thing I loved about the Psifield was that with a little effort, I could keep track of anyone and everyone within it's influence. I reached out with my mind through the flowing warmth of the psi energy. Soon enough, I had a reaction. There he was, by the edge of the potato farm. His mind was a bright beacon, yet he still hadn't quite developed the faculties to interact with the Psifield himself. Leaving me to travel to him.

I decide to test my Warp-Smith ability Open Warp Portal.

I used Convert and Repair all the time, in small ways. Both abilities were incredibly helpful in my search for better weapons and armor. I had also been testing Empower Constructs and Power Psifield quite often. But I hadn't touched my portal ability at all. I could mention that I'd seen a movie about teleportation were everything went horrible wrong, when I was very young. I'd never looked at flies in the same way again. Or the movie were they were trying out a new form of space travel when the ship just disappeared. When it was found, years later, it had been to hell itself. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to show me that movie at ten. I had hardly slept for days. The truth was I was frightened of even the concept of anything close to teleportation.

I kept telling myself I had to get over it. It was too useful an ability to waste. There would never be a better or safer time to try. I reached for the part of me that controlled my abilities... why was this so hard?

I felt Alina's presence in the Psifield reach out to me. Then I sensed the minds of my Robo-Buddies. Their message was clear, fear was unneeded. We were one. We were never alone. In that moment, I understood something profound that words would never be able to capture. A silly childish part of me thought of another film, about transforming robots. Their catch phrase stuck with me, "Until all are one." My fear melted away.

I opened the portal to Faergin's location. A dark hole in the world. I certainly would have been terrified by the idea of stepping into that portal. Yet, now it simply was. I stepped forward.

Stepping through it was anticlimactic. Simply an act of will. The minds of my Khalai robots returned to their tasks, and Alina refocused on her own experiments. I felt as if I had become less. Returning to being just me, was a shock, but not a terrible one. I don't think the human mind is meant for that kind of gestalt. I could see folks losing any semblance of self with that kind of unity.

It took a few minutes of staring at the growing Tree of Lore, for me to center myself enough to think properly. I hadn't seen him in over a week and he had grown so much. Where once he was roughly my height, now he stood roughly 15 feet tall. Still very skinny though. His leaves had shifted colors, into fiery oranges and yellows, and they were very similar in shape to oak leaves. I remembered that oak trees were very important to the Druids of my world for some reason.

His dancing once a quick shuffle step had morphed into a rhythmic swaying, rocking back and forth and side to side. Which he was doing even now as he gazed out into the badlands north of New Lordaeron. What did he see, or what was he searching for? His eyes had started glowing a bright yellow, burning with the light of knowledge. I found it a striking effect.

"Hey Faergin, how are you doing?" While he couldn't as yet respond verbally, I could still sense a lot of his feeling and intent. Whether that was due to my abilities as a Druid, or some function of his own skills, I didn't know. Right now he was pensive and somewhat distraught. He found looking into the wastes both fascinating and dreadful, a feeling not dissimilar to ones I've had staring at graveyards.

"Yeah." I could see how that would be troubling. There was a resolve in his mind as well. A sense of needing to face uncertainty, because there was no other option.

"We'll clean this all up one day. I'm sure you'll be here to see it, even if I'm somehow am not around anymore." Oof, I was socked in the gut by my own reflective thoughts on mortality. For some reason, Faergin found this hilarious. He shook all over in treeish amusement as the area was flooded with the tingling of his laughter. Then I had a flash of an image of old roots that couldn't be dislodged from the soil long after the tree itself had fallen. Was he implying, I was a stubborn ball of roots, or that I'd be here still long after him? Either way, an unsettling thought.

"I was wondering, do you know about groves?" A buzzing excitement filled the air. A thousand forms flooded my mind. A sense of peace, of connection, of focus. It was too much.

"Wait... calm down, please." I shifted through his ideas and patterns, after some struggle, I found a commonality. A set of trees arranged in a circle over something. Something powerful, something golden and flowing. The only thing I knew of like that was maybe the leyline. It had started as a muddy brownish color, but as more life and mana returned to the Valley it had shifted more toward a golden shade.

"So groves go over leylines?" A feeling of incompleteness. There was more. The grove was connected to the leylines, sure. But why? Power? Maybe, but the treefolk didn't seem all that interested in power. They saw it as a consequence of living, something naturally gained over time. No, there was an answer was in his feelings earlier, even if I was having a hard time seeing it. Then it snapped into focus. It should have been obvious.

"Connection." He filled the area with a sense of approval. Groves connected Druids to the Trees, the World, and to the concept of Nature itself. There was more, but it was too deep for me to see now. This was a place to start though, and the rest I could figure out as I went. Now I just needed to figure out where to put it.

I thanked him for his insight and started to walk back toward the Town Hall. One portal was enough for today.

We had mostly eliminated the need for disturbing the Valley. Other than trips to visit the Company Store, or the Nexus there was no longer a reason for anyone to go in there. I could communicate with Meadran and Alina from anywhere within a certain distance. The Probes had built a series of tunnels connecting the area next to the Nexus straight to the entrance cave, so the newly built Sentries wouldn't disrupt the peace of the forest there. Small critters had started just appearing out of nowhere in there and I didn't want them bothered.

Also the mana density in the Valley was getting to a point where it could hurt normal folks without protection. I was fine, and Jaina, even Mr. Wick seemed to tolerate the higher levels of energy but the Nomads and to a lesser extent folks summoned from Lordaeron quickly felt sick and even started having physical reactions if they didn't leave. Better to make it completely off limits for now.

Meadran had, about a week and a half ago, started a new Wisp grown forest to the south of town and it was already bearing fruit. Even a new Treant had emerged from the trees. He was more aggressive than his brethren, and even had tusks. Meadran had said his name was Korvaith. He would grow into a Tree of War. Korvaith quickly threw himself into our training program. It was bizarre at first watching a tree train with Raynor and his boys, but we all quickly adapted. I even made him his own custom rifle. What, was I going to have him do, throw rocks? Not on my watch.

Walking through the field reminded me that, it was about time for some more farms. But first, I wanted to knock out those outpost quests. It would be an excellent way to work with Mr. Wick and test Raynor and his boys.

After all, I didn't want a repeat of the Arasaka incident.