Eli POV
Salt.
As my eyes opened to the stone ceiling I had lovingly crafted bathed in a golden glow, that was the first thing I thought of. It was the first thing I tasted, smelled, and thought of every morning. So prevalent was the sensation, I felt the kitchen could go without a single speck of that white rock and serve perfectly seasoned food. Getting up, I pushed the brown blanket forward as I stretched in the flickering light of the mana lamp above. The room was wide and empty even as the stone was smooth and flowing from craftsmanship that would make it look at home in the palaces of royalty. Its lack of furniture had irked Salamede but she understood our wood-making resources were needed elsewhere.
I was alone this morning, an unusual occurrence nowadays as my two wives had taken great pride in being the ones to warm my bed but they showed me some consideration. Last night we had started working on the heating and laying the bare measurements for the plumbing system. Soaked from the rain and freezing in the cold, I had pushed through to finish the last item that would make this place a bulwark of civilization against the wilds of the Central Continent. The night had gone on far longer than previous working shifts but as the air on my skin didn’t immediately try to slap me with crippling hypothermia, I could only conclude it was worth every second of numbing ache.
Knowing my wives were seeing to any number of the needed tasks around here, I got up from my warm abode and my feet immediately protested as I stood on the right side of the bed. Taking a moment to acknowledge their objection, I pressed on towards the oak door on the left of the room. Taking a quick shower and seeing to other daily needs, I got dressed in a white shirt and brown pants and moved towards the iron door opposite of my bed, picking up the new smiling metal mask I had made from the floor along the way. After fastening it, I opened the door and came out into a small tunnel. It was a straight shot forward as the sunlight filtered through the holes in the crude glass, water, and iron beams above the stone lower half.
Having a giant fortress standing out amongst the waves and rocks would be a fantastic way to call every eye for miles towards us. Given that, I made everything just below the surface of the water or covered in a layer of stone made to mimic the natural contours of the island. Long tunnels designed to look like the hard, craggy rocks of the island we landed on now snaked around the outside of the various small pieces of land that dotted this place.
At least, where the natives hadn’t already staked a claim.
Walking forward, I came up to the thick iron door at the end of the hallway. As the screech rang out, the door revealed the meeting room. It was wide with jutting columns on the sides, stone walls dotted at the top with mana lamps, and a huge round table in the middle with a dozen seats. It had two entrances, one on the left towards the main hall and one on the right which lead out into the huge workshop that served as a maintenance and unloading area for the vehicle bay it connected to. Taking off to the left, I went through the double doors and into the wide-open hallway that served as the main entrance to the base from the outside through the doors opposite my entrance.
The iron double doors on the left held the kitchen and long tables, while those on the right took you to either the main sleeping area or the forge depending on where you wanted to go. I had gotten more than enough time in the forge last night and wanted to eat my breakfast. Going toward the kitchen, I opened it to see a few of the Frojan at the corner closest to the door resting around bowls of spicy fish stew and water. The poor frogmen had been earning their meals these past few days despite their lack of magical contribution to the stonework.
Glass had been a needed component for the windows and they had to go scrape it off the ocean floor, on top of doing the fishing, as they were the only ones who gracefully moved in the water. That was dangerous work, but some new magical crafts I made for them gave a good shock to any passerby looking for a quick meal. Salt, however, disagreed with their skin more than ours and it seemed that no amount of spraying water could get the stuff totally off them.
“Quad mage!” An older brown one called with a raised mug. The rest nodded towards me with smiles across their wide mouths. However hard they had been worked, the introduction of heating through the vents around the base had lifted their moods considerably. Something the wide double vents on the bottom of the left and right walls was providing in abundance.
“Feels almost like summer when I woke up this morning. Maybe that science stuff has some actual use.” Baloo called near the back of his pack of Frojan, the big green fellow laying back in a brown coat. This place apparently induced some desire for new attire in him, but those disk-like amber eyes of his showed the same old laid-back attitude he always had.
“Only the beginning, gentlemen,” I said with a slight nod as I went towards the kitchen on the left. They had worked as hard as I had these past few days but their water element meant setting up the enchantments for the heater near the center of the base and making the smaller tunnels around all of the rooms could only be done by me and Cell, my familiar. It may have been easier to keep using a bunch of smaller heaters with their own copper spheres to power them, but those would take up premium living space and they didn’t scale as well as a central heating station if I wanted to expand my home in the future.
Going up to the long open face of the kitchen, the grey stone still serving as walls and floors, but magically expanded wood was the top of the bar through which the kitchen behind it would dispense its labors.
“Morning,” I called to Salamede’s mother working at an oven. She was just a head or so taller than her workstation, a comparison that her goat-like head with its stubby brown horns made rather difficult. Though the brown dress that matched her fur had no stains on it that would indicate she was struggling. The setup was more industrial than she was used to, with big stone ovens along the back, wide heaters on the left of the floor to lay down big pots, and frying stations on the right. It was a lot to take in for the small brown Kelton woman at first but any fears about needing to make adjustments were quickly proven unfounded. After a few hours of practice, she worked the stoves, ladles hanging from hooks along the walls, and cutlery with that ease and skill that only a seasoned veteran of the kitchen could.
She turned from the cakes she was cooking on a flattop in the back to nod towards me. With a quick look to see me take a bowl from the stack on the left and pour myself some oatmeal from a steaming pot, she turned her white eyes back to her work. Quickly stuffing myself and finishing my meal with a quick swig of water from a mug, I made my way back out of the cafeteria and took a left to get a quick peep outside. While not strictly needed, the occasional bit of sunlight helped keep the mind balanced.
Opening the double iron doors, I came into a rather dreary room with only a single mana lamp in the back of the small place for light. The main item of interest, and the only way into the base from on foot, was the metal ladder with wooden pads on the steps. Taking it up into a slightly darker tunnel above, I reached the top and fumbled for a moment. After a few fruitless seconds, my hand eventually found the handle I was groping for.
A blast of natural light hit me in the face as I pushed the rocky top upward. The light hit me almost as quickly as the pure, salty air. More seasoning than oxygen, it seized my senses but I was mostly focused on what my eyes were telling me. Out across the wastes were dips and curves of stone with puddles of near white water before the bare hint of waves beyond showed the extent of the unnatural parts of the island near the edge of my vision. A few of the shaggy rocks that made up the actual land could be seen near on the right, while our more distant neighboring lands could be seen off in the distance to the left. Nearer on the left, a large brown fish was thrashing in the sea by the stone outcropping in the water.
I saw the ocean waves past the splashing but it wasn’t what drew my eyes at first. It was, of course, the barnacles hopping in rocks across the stone wastes. Those crustaceans of this world had taken their magicless cousin's craft and expanded it with their earth element magic. Between the sharp rocks on the right that made up the islands proper was an endless mass of concrete-like excretions that colonies of the little nuisances made. They seemed to make a whole island out of these rocks, but occasional deep fissures caused the pseudo land to crumble into the sea. When that happened, it took a few hours, but eventually, the barnacles would propel themselves through the water in small balls of mud, remaking lost bridges and shoring up holes in defenses, the latter of which was the reason everything was so salty.
Whether by special filtering appendages or more use of earth magic, the barnacles would collect the salt in the ocean water and put it in pools sprinkled throughout their home. Anything that managed to break the stone exterior would get a good choking in a white cloud. Something the unfortunate fish on the left was discovering.
Combined with the razor-sharp stone on land preventing travel over their home, our neighbors had a near-death grip on this corner of the world and made us fight for every damn inch of this place. Fortunately, crafts had no energy requirements beyond mana and gradually pushed them away for our own space. Unlike in the Coalition, mana was so thick here it came in flowing streams and cloud, leaving us with no concerns on that front.
As I closed the hatch, I remembered where I needed to be. Going down and back through the hallway, past the meeting room, and into the workshop, I saw part of my two wives ’ project for the day. Long racks filled with bars of metal and special wooden slabs clung to both sides of the walls. It was a large room, though. Three long tables designed to hold the immense weights of furnace parts or long sprawling sheets of plant fiber for balloons sat in the middle. The one on the right had my wife Gula and her mother Durka. Gula’s long bang of black hair twirled when she looked at me, her gold eyes filled with pride as her sharp chin pulled with her smile.
Walking up to her, I was getting ready to say hello when she scrunched up her nose and raised her eyebrows, distorting the horizontal scar on her nose and the vertical scar across her left eye. She was having another one of those moments of hesitation, a very recent and very unwelcome addition to our marriage. Taking the initiative, I pulled down my mask and kissed her, playing her smoky, spicy flavor across my tongue. A satisfying bit of flavor in these spiceless lands.
After a few seconds of savoring each other’s tastes, she pulled back and turned back towards the two pieces of wood she was working on with her mother. They seemed to be making the steering wheel, with a few of the springs and clumps of metal strewn over the table. The slabs were a smaller part of a time-saving initiative I had brewed up on my way to these waters.
I could do everything myself, of course. But fobbing off as much work as possible to others if they could make a quality product was preferable when I could spend that time remaking the connector. Each slab of wood had a special black indent on it that would activate the enchantment. On the back of each piece were instructions on what it did burned into the wood. Once several pieces were complete, the assembly instructions would show them how to bring them together and fit them into the destined vehicle, building, soldier’s armor, etc.
“Damn gears can’t seem to turn right,” Durka said with a flare of her ridged nose. The muscular Orc had a leather apron and grey shirt with brown pants to match her daughters. Her three cornrows on the left side of her head were unmoved even as her two long brown braids swayed with her irritated shake as the two gears in front of her wouldn’t quite fit as they should.
Moving a bit closer to them, the problem was immediately apparent to me.
“This gear,” I said, pointing to the right one, “Is a bit smaller than the other.”
They both looked at the interlocking metal with looks of frustration.
“I thought it was a large gear.” Durka fussed with puckered lips.
“It is one of the larger ones. But being a large gear is not the same as being the right gear.” I explained patiently as I walked them through the whole process again.
When I had first set up this process of creating all of our machine parts, it had been a pain to explain the steps to everyone. More than eight times I had to burn out some instructions and rewrite them because I used technical terms or made assumptions of knowledge that were far outside the intended user's scope. Still, it was easier to correct it all now rather than later when we had a few ships or furnaces riddled with unusable junk and I had to correct the thinking of several hundred people rather than a dozen-plus.
‘Mother has been quite adamant on us completing one ship together. I think she spent more time looking over the steering wheel and furnace than anything else on the trip here.’ Gula said in a spirit connection, her words coming into my mind through an electric sensation across my arms skin.
‘Good. Now I know who to stick the teaching job with for the newcomers.’
Gula got a small smile that went unnoticed by her mother. The bulkier Orc was too busy licking her lips and small tusks as she looked over the instructions again. With a small nod, I walked over to the right towards the wide-open entrance directly opposite the one I had entered through. The vehicle bay was large enough to store three of the house-sized vessels that brought us here. The walls and roof were the ubiquitous stone dotted with mana lamps and a hatch near the back of the right wall.
With the original in the back of the cavernous space, the makings of the next ship were in the middle. It was more of an interceptor with the girth of something between a regular boat and the hulking mass of its predecessor. A bare hull and a few odd bits of steel sticking out along the sides of the flat-bottomed ship showed considerable progress compared to the empty shell it had been a few days ago.
On my left were the huge double iron doors connecting the bay to the furnace area, resembling those in a hangar more than the ones used in the rest of the building. They were open and in the adjacent room, I saw the industrial heart of our home. Along the right were two furnaces, each having large heating coils below a graphite bowl in a thick stone frame and behind them were racks of ever whirring copper spheres with wires going into the back of the graphite frame.
There was an assorted array of iron and steel bars stacked in large neat piles by the left side of the large room. With the great increase in mana here, we could manipulate the metal without making it red hot first and still have multiple large crafts going. Still, future-proofing would require people to become comfortable with using molten metals when we had a large fleet of ships that had to be made and maintained. Mentally noting to put in a smaller forge in the workshop, and all subsequent fire safety measures, I walked forward towards the wide center of the room where Salamede and Lokan were working on the long, flat bars of steel that would eventually become the shell to hold the balloon when the ship was landed but might need to take off in a few minutes. I was looking towards the large doubled doored hatch to the left wall, reliving the freezing hell of last night when my thoughts were interrupted.
“Ah, Dear.” Salamede’s delighted voice called to me as she got up from the middle of the group. Her smooth cheekbones and grey fur were the same as always, though her white shirt and brown pants, borrowed from my wardrobe, were a big divergence from her typical dress. The straight ivory horns above her head moved with her moving over various long bands of metal that the two had been working on with enchantments on the slabs of wood in their hands gradually molding them together.
My Kelton wife quickly got her morning kiss in, complete with a nose rub, before she turned to look back towards her day's goal.
“You know, this-s would go a lot faster if we did it on the s-ship,” Lokan said in the usual drawl of her kind. The blue snake woman had a darker blue along the top side of her body, with a lighter, almost sky blue, belly, and lower jaw. Her slitted red eyes would look rather intimidating if they didn’t hold a bored look as she worked the cross-section of two of the steel ribbons together. All the while making sure her purple robe and ever-present grey blanket didn’t get in the way.
“I know. But sometimes we may have too many other ships coming and going to have construction crews walking around the launch pad. Also, if a ship is damaged enough, teams may need to start making parts and replacements that don’t currently have anything to attach to.”
She huffed but merely nodded.
“Aye. Should have known better than to question someone s-so experienced.”
I opened my mouth but Salamede put her left hand, distinctly human as was everything from her collar bone down, on my chest.
“He knows a lot. He also knows enough to listen to others when needed. Don’t hesitate to ask questions about what he’s doing here or tells you to do.”
“What we’re doing here.” I quickly put in with a hand on my wife's hips. “I’m not the only one who’s put in the hours to get things up and running.”
The snake woman smiled before turning back towards her work. Salamede gave me another kiss on the cheek before sitting back down amongst the pile of metal bands. As I took a few steps onward, I did a quick lookover on the latest project. Sitting on the floor to the right of the stacks of metal bars were long troughs of wood. These would act as the garden beds for our magical farms. In each were plant-growing enchantments that would make our crops grow much faster than normal. How much faster and the amount of mana that would be needed wasn’t a precise art but I felt I had a general grasp on the metrics involved.
Cell and Andrew’s familiar were out surfing around outside somewhere. As dangerous as these lands were, being cooped up in here for so long had been a lot harder on the familiars than the rest of us. The crude surfboard and the air boosted armor I gave the fire ape let him have some fun with Cell and some of the younger Frojan. The fact it also served as a scouting trip to give us a better picture of the surrounding islands meant their time wasn’t totally wasted.
After a few hours, I had put in all of the enchantments I needed. It was close to lunch, but I wanted to at least get one board up and running to start getting some data on the plants, mana needs, etc. Walking through the smaller double doors of the furnace area, I came into the main living quarters where everyone would be staying. It was row after row of doors with stairs on the left and right leading up to nine open floors. What also drew my attention was the tendrils of smoke crawling along the ceiling.
Looking further ahead, I saw the two I had put in charge of fire safety. Andrew was on the left side of the third floor while Jeff pulled out air from a smoking room with a green mana construct in his hand. The simple circle with a triangle in the middle was the basis of the wind spell that was trying to suffocate the fire within the room. Walking up the metal stairs, I stopped beside Andrew who was leaning against the rail with both arms crossed.
“You were right,” Andrew said with a shake of his shoulder-length red hair. Those strong cheekbones had some of the hair play across them as the 6’1 man looked at the room with oceanic teal eyes that saw nothing of interest. “Even when we take away the air and suppress the fire with magic, it just re-ignites itself when we stop.”
Jeff was off to the right, his black hair now had the same length as his brothers, though his slight chin didn’t have the same pucker that his brothers had at the moment. Even as he worked the air spell, the man had a certain… lifeless quality about him, accentuated by the mindless stare of his oceanic eyes into the flames. The smooth cheekbones on his face had little color and his frame showed he had only been eating enough to meet his bare needs.
He was only eighteen or so, yet he had to deal with one of the most painful things a man could be put through. With the loss of his beloved and bloody vengeance extracted, the animating energy of his rage had cooled. I gave a few words of encouragement here and there, but what he decided to do or feel in the coming months was something only he could determine. Still, it was a variable I would have to keep an eye on.
“Alright,” I said with a nod “The Frojan can set up the mist spewing suits we’ll give to everyone. Jeff, you can help set up an air bubble for the suits while Andrew starts working on the slabs of wood for fire suppression. Make sure the Frojan know to make the mist quickly disappear after being formed or the suits will only accomplish boiling the wearer to death as opposed to saving them.”
The two brothers nodded before moving back for me to put the fire out properly. After dousing the fire out, I went to the sixth floor. There were three more floors above that as nine floors were as high as I felt comfortable making the dorms even with the solid rock and metal skeletons. At the end of the walkway, I started making using magic to dig into the stone rock.
I was forming the next big room that would be our mana-fueled farm. It was going to be stacks of long wooden troughs with mana lamps on the bottom to provide light for the plants below it. The whole layout of the base would be rather unconventional, as having massive dedicated rooms was the better choice considering how well generators and electrical equipment scaled with size. For now, though, mana, not electricity, would be fueling most of our devices.
And since mana was spewed forth from the earth, and not a well-designed machine, things had to be a lot more spread out than I would typically have them. I was thinking layers of civilian manufacturers like woodworkers, tanners, and farmers each with chutes to take things down to the lower floors while potentially dangerous items like furnaces would be kept on the ground floor. As stone was moved and torn, I went over all of the dimensions involved in my head. The idea of hitting a lava vein was thankfully not a concern, as Cell had gone through the hard rock that formed these islands and found no evidence of any active magma coursing through the island. Leaving me to dig through the stone up through the tall island, the brothers promptly vacated the area.
It was a few more hours of stone shifting, wood growing then enchanting, and strengthening the wooden layers in the stone to make sure our neighbors couldn’t instantly shift our walls. After putting on the needed grooves to fit the troughs into the wall. Getting them here would be a pain, but we would only have to do it once by hand. This new area, and subsequent expansions, would be dug directly into these stony islands. Airflow wasn’t a concern right now, but I had made the needed tunnels for it when I made the central heating as it’s around the third floor of installations that I would guess that a dedicated airflow system would be needed.
Leaving a hole in the layers of wood by the side opposite of the entrance, it would serve as the entrance to the future shaft that would be transporting all of our goods. For now, I spent the rest of the day moving the long garden beds into their needed positions with magic, sweat, and muscle. After a quick lunch of grains and dried berries, I started the project of filling up the troughs with rich soil from around the island's sea bed and putting the rest of the finishing touches into place. Untouched by man for thousands of years, endless generations of fish and their bodies fed the rich soil that would in turn be feeding us.
Magical farming, contrary to most regular farming, was extremely dangerous if done improperly. Sure, the potatoes, carrots, and onions that would make up our first batch of crops would be magically enhanced from the growing spells. But they would mostly be growing fast as opposed to developing their magical enhancement properties. So they wouldn’t be dangerous, but if any worms or other pests started feeding on them, they could kill a regular farmworker.
After spending a few minutes in the furnaces to burn out any potential future super predators, the soil was moved by the Frojan and me into their homes. As the troughs were fused into their holes in the wall, the two brothers put their fire elements to work making mana lamps. Their main material came from the strips of leather along the vehicle bay that soaked in the ambient mana to make the crystal shell for the inner flame enchantment.
These weren’t the regular diamond-shaped mana lamps, rather curved long pieces that provided the light of several of its smaller cousins. Fitting along the bottom of the garden beds, they would save a lot of time compared to having to turn off six of the typical lamps. A few seconds saved over several dozen troughs would free up a lot of manpower if we had a few facilities like these in the future. Along the walls and by the doors, several of the more typical diamond-shaped mana lamps were installed. As I was putting in the stone steps beside each stack of the long gardens, Salamede came in with sacks of the seeds.
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“Nice,” She said as she put down the last sack and looked around the barn-sized room with six rows of tube-shaped garden beds. They were spaced evenly apart with a stone staircase between each except for the middle two. I was currently putting the railing on the last staircase and came down to let the frogmen with buckets of soil move up. Walking across the stone floor, Salamede put out her arms to take me in a hug and a kiss. A kiss she took only a moment to savor before pulling away.
“Dinners ready, in case you were wondering,” She said to the chorus of excited grunts from all. Everyone promptly left but I had to stay behind for a minute to magically manipulate the wood of the last few troughs around their long mana lamps but quickly finished.
Leaving the newest addition to our home, I headed towards the cafeteria. It was a lively affair despite the samey feast. The meal consisted of the always served fish stew, water, and fresh bread. For all of the magic in this world, sea-going cows, pigs, and chickens were apparently too much to ask for. It was a rather routine meal, but as the Frojan scattered around the tables, the brothers sat off to the right with Salamede and her mother, and Gula worked the pots with her mother, I noticed the now tolerable temperature had made everyone a bit livelier.
It was hard going in the first few days, but the past two or so weeks had seen a cold hole in the stone turn into a proper home. The central heating was a massive project that I took as an opportunity to make some room for future plumbing alongside the small tunnels to move the heater air. As big of a pain as it was, we were much closer to a full setup now. Moving to get my meal from Gula, with a good slap on the Orc servers bum to flesh out that authentic tavern experience, I was accosted by the younger red Frojan on my way to the table.
“Hey,” he said, with his voice having a bit of the long squeak of mid-teen years. “We did a really good job working on the heating. Though that was a bit out of our element.”
“Yes, but science doesn’t require anyone to be born with any kind of element,” I responded with him walking beside me. A smile from Salamede told me I was free to sit with this younger member of our team. “Just because a pump or furnace involves heat, water, or air, doesn’t mean it will work more or less depending on the magical elements of the person building it.”
That was a lesson I was trying to instill into our members at this early stage. Tomorrow I was going to have the two brothers, one a fire scion and the other a lightning caster, work on the plumbing with me to help disassociate what we’re doing here from previous magical workings. Something the Frojan picked up on rather quickly when I was having them put together the heating coils.
I spent my late lunch regaling the young lad with tales of my time in space, focusing mostly on one job where I worked on extracting liquid iron from a planet that was close to its sun.
“Really? The sun can get hot enough to turn mountains of iron into slag?” He questioned me, in between his bite into a piece of fresh bread.
“Consider how small things get the farther away they are,” I said with a raised finger. “Now think about how big the sun still is in the sky. That sun, so many millions of miles away, still has the raw output needed to kill you if you go without cover for long.”
He got a thoughtful look as I got up from the table. My meal completed, I went to work on getting the basics of the plumbing planned out. Opening the hatch in the workshop and walking down the stone steps brought me to last night's work. A large square box of metal sat in the back left of the wide room, the ground around it littered with some ashes from the burning incense I had used for the blessing. Laying up against the curved wall and bathed in the golden glow of mana lamps, there was a silent hum and whooshing of fans coming from it as the tunnels beneath delivered heat to the entire base.
It was a good hour of working on and measuring wooden pipes, a task I had made simpler with wooden crafts molding and growing the wooden tubes to exact sizes, when Salamede came running down the stairs.
“Eli! Visitors came back with Cell.” She said before turning back up towards the workshop. My heart racing, I ran up the stairs and towards the main hallway entrance, moving through the crowd of armed Orcs and Frojan as I did so, and made my way through the door that served as our only entrance above ground. Coming up the ladder and peeking out onto the salty wastes of our home, Cell immediately sent me a spirit connection as a whoosh filled the tunnel from him landing on my shoulder.
The black mass of shifting geometry was now a little bigger than my fist and the crystal sphere that served as his head had an oblong shape to it. Whatever Cell was growing into, the visions he sent me derailed any lines of thoughts I had.
Out on the wastes of ice, he and Gretton had come across a small gathering of miserable Keltons. If that had been all of it they would have kept moving, but they were on a large piece of ice in the middle of the freezing ocean. They quickly spotted the reason, a jellyfish the size of a house with sharp barbs flowing along the top like a mohawk had used fire spells from its long tentacles to quietly cut the small groups meager camp away from the rest of the ice sheet. I was expecting a great battle to come through the connection next, but the creature seemed too afraid to fight Cell and the fire ape over its meal and it promptly abandoned the unfortunate souls.
It took a while after that as Cell looked around to make sure there were no prying eyes. When he saw nobody coming to aid the unfortunates, he started pulling their icy raft towards our base. The tale ended with him moving them off to the left and getting help while Gretton kept them all warm. Pushing the hatch open, the salty air with its soul-sucking cold immediately hit me but I kept on my course over the rocky land to the left.
In a dip in the stone were a gaggle of goat-headed people and from the looks of them, I could see why the jellyfish hadn’t bothered fighting for its meal. More rags than clothes, bodies with as much bones as flesh, the word destitution was practically written on their furry foreheads. Though the spell the buff fire ape to the right made this hole a bit more livable. He had wood armor over his midsection and was standing on his board near the edge of the dip into the recess below. A few of the men gamely put up sharpened sticks and tried to interpose themselves between me and the women clutching children at their breasts, their white eyes showing fear even without the irises. I wanted to say there were a dozen or so of them, but their panicked movements made a chore of counting them.
Making no sudden movements as the sun showed a fading orange over the sky above, I took a deep breath.
“Greetings, welcome to my humble abode. I would ask what brought you here, but my friends already gave me the story. I don’t know about you, but this cold doesn’t agree with me. If you wouldn’t mind, I could bring you in and we could talk in a much more amicable setting.”
One older man huffed in the middle of the pack. He was a bit burlier than the others, with some grey in the black fur that ran down to his color bone. The spiraled brown horns shook with his head.
“And what guarantee of safety would we have?” He demanded with a clutched spear in hand as he whirled his brown ragged cloak and flared his snout to produce a cloud of steam.
“The guarantee that, if I had wanted to kill you or thought you had anything I want, I could just turn around and come back in the morning to pick it up from your frozen bodies. If that’s not enough, I can bring one of you to make sure this isn’t a trick.”
There was a moment where they all looked at each other, obviously debating in spirit connections, before the older one walked forward.
“You’re wrong,” he said in that rough voice typical to Keltons whenever they audibly spoke.
I raised an eyebrow but he continued.
“If you wanted to kill us, your pet would have had to do nothing. Still, the ice is not kind to trusting souls.”
I got a small smile as he walked forward.
“I’ve never heard of familiars being called pets, but I suppose these lands are different.”
He stopped dead a few feet away from me.
“Familiars? Several?”
“Yes. You’ve already met mine, Cell. Gretton will keep you warm, though I cannot guarantee his scion will be as welcoming.”
The meager group looked nervously between each other, the older one, conversely, seemed to relax a bit as he moved up the incline to stand in front of me.
“Well, then. I suppose we have even less reason to worry. Whether you mean us good or ill, there isn’t anything we could do either way.” His voice laden with resignation, he followed my finger towards the open hatch. Walking with rags for shoes he had to make sure to avoid the barnavles sharp stone as he kept to the natural stone of the island before he came up to the hatch. The Kelton man looked down the hole for a moment before placing his spear to the right side. I waited a few seconds, watching his movements the entire time as he made his way down the ladder before I followed him.
A few seconds on our way down, he suddenly stopped. I prepared an earth shield to crush him, thinking he was preparing an attack when I saw he was just flapping his ragged cloak in the warm air with one hand.
“Sorry, scion. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this warm, I let it get the better of me.”
His apology delivered, we started moving again.
When we got to the bottom of the ladder, I noticed some of the Frojan and Gula waiting near the iron double doors further ahead. I noticed some questioning looks from my group so I decided to quell the tension.
“The first of our newcomers. I’ll show him around with Cell. I think our guests will need a lot of food and bedding, so let’s get on that.”
With nods from all around, the group dispersed with Salamede in the back heading to the right towards the kitchen.
“What’s your name, by the way?” I asked our newest arrival.
“Kantor.” He responded with a gracious nod.
Encouraging him to go through the door, I followed behind him as he took in the huge hallway and immense stone columns on the sides. His nose, however, seemed to be in charge as it pulled him off to the right as I followed behind. Opening the double doors, his eyes took in the long rows of wooden tables though the smell of fish stew and bread quickly turned his head to the left.
My wives, their mothers, and a few of the culinarily inclined Frojan were working the ovens and soft dough to prepare for our guests, but the days leftover bread drew his eyes as it sat in a basket at the end of the buffet bar. Despite his hunger, he still maintained his dignity and looked at the big pots, ovens, and friers with interest. Cell wasn’t fooled, despite his cool demeanor. My familiar dashed through the air with a wind spell, picked up two loaves of bread in his mass of black geometry, and flew back to Kantor.
Despite his rags and quick entrance into the cafeteria, I still found myself impressed with his self-control. Taking only a few nibbles, he looked around the room and took in the mana lamps and that omnipresent heat that had so escaped him on those sheets of ice he had previously called home.
“If I may be so bold, great mage, would it offend if I asked what you were doing in this wonderful fortress of warm stone?” He asked, taking only a moment before he bit into the bread again.
“Starting a new world. Though I feel it would be best if we had this conversation with everyone.”
He nodded, looking at the racks of fish and doughs being prepared around the large table near the window into the kitchen. He was a strong man. But he was near withered, tired, and when those long nights of freezing winds and no food finally broke his will, the snap could almost be physically heard.
“I’m not foolish enough to pretend this is a meeting of two powers. You saw how starved we are, how thin the children are. The ones who've survived so far, anyway.” The sadness in his eyes, punctuated by a puckering of his lips that pulled the skin over his smooth cheekbones, told of a slog with its price well paid. “What would we need to do to be allotted even a corner of some warehouse in this place?”
I nodded with a smile as the smell of freshly baked bread started wafting from the kitchen.
“Work, fighting, and everything else around here that needs doing. But, again, I think the meal would be better served before my words. Let’s get everyone inside.”
He nodded, turning with an eager step from where he had come.
The next few minutes seemed to repeat on a loop as half-dead Keltons came down the ladder and had a stunned expression as they realized that the heat their meager fires could never provide was now fully encasing their emaciated forms. Then they smelled the food. The adults all had some composure, but the children and young teens paid no mind to my exquisite stonework, the unfathomable amount of mana crystals on the walls, or anything else as they ran towards the kitchen.
As the day's leftovers became their first proper meal in what I gathered had been weeks, the new food arrived and previously thin bellies were quickly filled. They were all on the right side of the cafeteria in a tight mass taking every loaf in the serving bowls they could. I didn’t mind feeding them, as my trade with the dwarves had left us well stocked. In truth, I had been stocking supplies for a scenario where our only food income was internally generated. The bounty of edible fish here left us with enough grains, fruits, and vegetables to sustain us well past my initial guesses.
I approached our newest members with a smile as I came from the kitchen. They looked on sheepishly, bowing their heads and refusing to meet my eyes. The adults did, at least. As they always have and always will, the youth had little regard for propriety and station as they munched away on the bounty set before them. I was going to start speaking when I noticed the black flesh accompanying frost-bite on some of their fingers.
“All right,” I announced to the table. “I think a heavy meal and good rest is in order. But first, I’ll be doing some medical inspections. Salamede! Want to come look?”
The grey-furred woman had been a crafter when we set out from the Coalition. It was when she passed out during the carving of our meeting room that she finally became a caster the day after. Not just any caster, a healer no less. I had overheard some questions about where those magical resources to make her a mage had come from. It had been a bit awkward, trying to fob it off on her clan being a magically gifted one that had been forced to flee the icy wastes. That hadn’t been enough, though. Eventually, to save time and prevent mistrust I had to explain where she was getting it from.
Suffice to say, the need for us to have a bedroom separate from the rest of them was now an unquestioned aspect of our living arrangements.
Which was good because Salamede damn near killed me with her constant demands on my bounty. Though, she was far meeker in getting it nowadays.
My Kelton wife quickly bounded out of the kitchen, wearing her green dress that was only slightly tight against her generous figure. Her eyes, though, were wide as she carried two stools in her hands and promptly sat one beside me and one yellowish furred woman who was missing three fingers along her left hand. As I sat down and sucked in mana, an older Kelton woman with brown fur and stubby ivory horns, coughed before speaking.
“Will all the servants be so well dressed?” She asked, plainly looking Salamede up and down with a bit of jealousy.
“If you want to,” I said before getting to work on the patient's hand. She didn’t object and stood still as she looked on with mild interest at her reforming flesh. “Though, I don’t think my wife would appreciate you taking her clothes. Might have to look into making your own when our first cotton harvest comes in.”
A slight hiccup accompanied the ‘wife’ part of my speech, though Salamede was too absorbed by the golden circles forming in my hands to blush. It was a few minutes of work to get the fingers properly grown, but the tears and hug I had gotten from the woman was a payment I gladly accepted. More than a few had to be taken to the side to remove a hopelessly black digit, in most cases several, but those deformities were quickly seen to. As I set my last patient, a small girl with a crushed foot, back onto the table with her mother, I was properly winded.
Even as great as my magical abilities were, everyone had their limits. Salamede, perhaps for the first time, got a full understanding of my powers when she had met hers. When she saw how easily I took in mana and how long I used it after she had to quit about halfway through the patients, I noticed she sat on my lap with more than a little pride. Well, more pride than usual. That kind of went against the whole point of what we were doing here, but an impressed wife is a hard person to correct.
I was sitting nearer to the kitchen amongst the group, Salamede on my lap with her head against my shoulder when Gula came up behind me carrying a tray of baked fish. Her white apron covered most of the white shirt and brown pants she wore, attire she had taken from me until more appropriate clothing could be made. Though, as her husband, I was the only one allowed to notice how the clothes tugged on her breasts and thighs.
When she set the tray down, she looked to me as she passed by. I raised an expecting eyebrow as I put my other leg out for her to sit on.
‘Eli,’ She asked in a spirit connection as a few eyes were drawn to me. ‘Do you think that’s a good idea? To have an Orc being so close to you.’
A bit of anger colored my cheeks but I kept my composure.
‘Wife. Lap. Now.’ I demanded, wiggling my leg again.
She puckered her lips for a moment, stealing a quick side glance towards the others who had stopped to give us their full attention. Finally, she rolled her gold and black eyes before she sat down on my lap. Resting her head against my shoulder, I kissed her forehead affectionately. Looking back towards the main group, I expected horror, fear, or bewilderment.
What I got were looks of understanding.
“Ah. So that’s what you’re doing.” Kantor said with a nod.
It took me a bit to adjust my expectations to reality before I responded.
“What, may I ask, is that?”
There was a look between the assembled guests but Kantor kept to his role as representative of the group.
“Orc siring to spread magical ability. There are a few men in history that have been known to do that. The most recent was the lord of that healing house who runs Rainbows Piss. Though, you seem quite affectionate towards the two misses, and Keltons aren’t guaranteed to produce magical heirs.”
The odd name was quickly forgotten as my stomach did a flip. That was the worst news I had received in a long time. If there was already a frame for a mage man willingly siring with an Orc, then everyone we talked to and brought in would automatically assume that’s what I was doing here. I guess a clean slate was too much to ask for, but it wasn’t an ideal start to that dance.
“No.” I answered firmly, “I will be having a lot of children with my two wives, but it will be out of love, not a cruel scheme for power.”
My possessive clutching of Salamede’s and Gula’s sides made them both put a hand to my chest. A wave of Hm’s and quizzical looks washed over the crowd as I was thinking on how to best present my case. Which was interrupted when a spirit connection from Salamede and Gula touched my chest.
‘I think the powerful scion is making them a bit nervous. They may only agree with what you’re saying to not offend, not because they support or even understand the cause.’ Salamede said.
‘Yeah’ Gula agreed, ‘Hearing it from an Orc with an apron and a Kelton woman in a frilly green dress will make them more willing to voice objections.’
It took me a moment to consider that. I suppose if we were going to have hundreds of people here someday, I couldn’t always be here to give the pitch and this was as good a time as any for the two to work on their salesmanship.
“Well, my good fellows, I would love to give you the full story, but my two wives will have to give you the explanation. As you could well guess, there are a lot of things to do here and precious little time to do any of it.”
Understanding nods greeted the announcement as Gula and Salamede got off me and sat at the table to begin explaining my history. Leaving the room, I headed back towards the underground area that would serve as the room for the heaters and plumbing. When I got there, Jeff and Andrew were looking over the pipes of magically strengthened wood.
“I heard we had some guests,” Jeff said, his eyes looking at the pipe at his feet, though his expression left no doubt that his mind was only barely considering the question.
“The first of many. But unless that changes anything here, we should focus on the task at hand.”
Andrew, leaning against the wall to the right, nodded. It took a moment, but Jeff nodded as well. Though he had the same drained manner he always had these days, he took up one of the wooden handles I had given them a few days ago to practice with. Laying down the heating had been hard as I had to finish the exhaust vents in a cave near the back to give the heated air time to cool down before it sent a long column of steam in the air. The plumbing, however, would be installed along the floor as opposed to the walls.
The rest of the day and some of the night passed pretty painlessly. The two brothers, despite all appearances, still had the mental wherewithal to do their due diligence practicing with the stone chipping tools I had given them and were quickly smoothing out small channels in the stone floors towards the living areas. These would be getting communal showers and toilets, replacing the buckets, and outdoor use of the magical showerheads.
Still, the work wasn’t as immaculate as I would have liked. Hair thin precision brought about by nanite structures giving details on every crumb of errant stone made for a heavy blow to my neuridian soul when I had to stick to eyeballing it. The brothers, however, hadn’t been baptized in the holy works of a planets cathedral. Works that were designed by artificial intelligence and ordained by the sectors high priest. All in all, I suppose it was more like a stumble for them as opposed to a cliff jump.
With only the water delivery pipes being worked on, we made it into the living area. The first of its nine floors were converted into full bathrooms, complete with fixtures of wood that the workshop had been molding. While the finishing touches of mana lamps were being installed, I left the two other humans here to go check out the last leg of this journey. Going toward the back of the hangar, I opened a wide hatch to a staircase that led to the cave below.
This whole area was the only bit of stone that had been even remotely flat. It still required a lot of work, of which the rather thin outer wall of the hangar had been the first. As we worked, I made an easy to expand connection to the sea in case we ever had regular ships and to allow easier access for the Frojan. My imagination wasn’t good enough to see when we could possibly need a regular ship, but it was a bit of future-proofing that was easy to keep hidden and undo if need be. As mana lamps passed by me, I eventually reached the door. Working the long handle, the pho-rock that made up the entrance swung open to reveal a wide-open cave with the waves of the sea crashing against sharp rocks to the left.
Carefully maneuvering over the algae-strewn stone towards the right, I came to the next false wall that gave a false impression that the cave was only a few dozen feet long. Pulling on the bit of long stone that served as a handle, the wide door revealed a rather steamy section of the cave that was several dozen yards long and wide. On my right, holes in the wall blasted hot air out, providing both warmth and airflow for the base as air was sucked in from the salty wastes on the other end of our home.
Looking down, the deep hole I had put in yesterday was filled with seawater. Sucking in the seawater directly was a fantastic way to introduce parasites or add a massive workload of changing and making filters to laborers who were needed elsewhere. Instead, I would simply use steam and my limitless electricity to collect the water that was needed.
I spent a few hours putting a smooth surface across the ceiling of the cave to have the steam collect into drops before sliding into a reservoir on the right, then fetching the pipes needed. Cell had to get the dimensions for drilling into the plumbing room, but that was quickly done as the two brothers started getting the pieces for the pump together. They seemed intrigued by the copper spheres, pumps, and wires. There wasn’t the faintest hint of understanding in their eyes when I explained electromagnetic forces, but they at least understood the instructions that I wrote down and it only took three attempts at making the pieces to get the pistons moving.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips as water could be heard running through the pipes to the rest of the base. The smaller pumps that would be installed near the endpoints would monitor for low pressure and pump more water into showers, sinks, and toilets to keep the water level up at those junctures, but that was an issue that would be fixed tomorrow. Our beds calling us, an exhausted wave was all we could manage as a farewell. Everyone else had been content to sleep on the ship, which had been outfitted with several beds and the furnace had provided a modicum of heat. Salamede, however, insisted we have our room away from everyone as soon as possible.
Making my way through the meeting room, I opened the iron door and walked down the dimly lit hallway before opening the door to my room. It was as bare as when I had first woken up, but my two wives on the bed presented a far more tantalizing vision than any art or furniture I could have put in here. Gula wore her typical lacy white nightdress, the thin fabric showing the scars along her body and the curves around her hemp bra and underwear. Salamede was even less modestly dressed, having just the white bra and a piece of underwear.
With no words spoken, they both got up and walked around the bed to stick to my sides. Gula, however, faltered a bit as she came to my left. It was a regular occurrence now and her next few actions were as predictable as the tide. The Orc looked down for a bit, shame in her eyes, before coming back up to look at me with a puckered lip. She used to be a bit more agreeable when it came to sexual aggression.
Before Borba, at least.
As disdainful as . . . as that was, one thing I hated the most about it was how it changed my relationship with my wives. Gula had a hard time being romantic, forget initiating anything. Salamede, likewise, never jested or teased me about sleeping with other women now. While we were putting in the bed, I had made a small joke about Salamede wanting to expand it for more room. Normally, I would have gotten a small quip about me needing to add multiple beds or a light rub to accentuate her agreement. The awkward shake of her head and stumbled no had killed the light mood I was going for.
‘Eli,’ Salamede purred in a spirit connection as she molded against my right side. ‘Our new guests were quite pleased with the new arrangements. More than one burst into tears from the thought of sleeping on the blankets we provided.’
‘Right, we were wondering if…’ Gula faltered as she looked between me and Salamede. It was an awkward moment before she pulled away. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m quite ready.’
I pulled her in for a kiss.
‘I love you.’ That made her cheeks flush with dark green as my tongue scoured her mouth. ‘And I’ll wait for you to be ready to consummate that love.’
She did a light lick on her lips before rubbing my shoulder and heading out the door. Salamede, however, moved closer to the bed and opened her legs with a small smile. I had a flash of bitterness at how she would have normally pushed me onto the bed and forcefully extracted her needs from me, in that way I found most agreeable. I squashed the feeling before I took off the smiling metal mask, though. This young body had its needs and it wasn’t willing to let me go on without sating them, exhaustion be damned.
The night was longer than any of the others, but god was it more relaxing than a week's sleep.
Waking up in a tangled mess of sheets and pillows, I found myself with company this morning. I took a moment to lounge as my face rested on Salamede’s motherly breasts. After a few minutes of letting my baser desires revel in those wonderous pillows, I began idly sucking her brown nipples. That woke her up with a light moan.
“Eli,” Her rough voice called out. “You bastard. Attacking me when I’m weak like this,”
Her objection was undone by the hand she put behind my head. With no ability to pull back, I put the tongue I was playing across her right nipple into overdrive. I was happy just to have a bit of that aggressive side of Salamede back. Happiness I let her know by rubbing her thighs with firm gropes and hard pinching. I looked up and she threw her head back with a particularly hard growl before she got up. Releasing her breast with a loud pop, we got our clothes and went to shower. The cave had been the designated shower area and this would hopefully be the last time it would serve that purpose.
After getting ready for the day, we headed towards the kitchen. Along the way, we dodged a few of the new children who now littered the place. Coming into the cafeteria, it was a lot more lively with our newest members getting some food in their stomachs. I sat at a long table to the left while Salamede went to get some bowls of oatmeal and mugs of water. As I looked over the room, I saw the Frojan off to the left while the Keltons took up the side closest to the door.
The two groups weren’t . . . confrontational. They were just unused to the presence of each other. An overly polite ‘excuse me’ there, a stiff nod in passing here. It appears they could at least work together.
‘I’m sure they didn’t really understand the science that I explained to them.’ Salamede said in a spirit connection as she set a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of me with an accompanying mug of water.
‘Meh. They’ll understand enough when they start making motors and working furnaces. What about the long term? Are they fully aware of what the end of all this is?’ I asked as I lifted my spoon and blew some steam away.
‘More than aware. They are the remains of a group that was more than thrice their current number. Potentially dying years from now doesn’t scare them.’
I nodded and finished up my meal before explaining my plan for today to Salamede.
‘This is going to be a new experience for all of you. I will be working on other projects. While I’m working, I want everyone training our newcomers on the processes and machines we’ve been making. Eventually, I will make a large enough wood enchantment that will make hulls so I won’t have to do that anymore. If there is a problem, don’t hesitate to come get me.’
She nodded and got up with a quick kiss before going to the kitchen to inform the others. Taking a moment to fully appreciate the increase in noise and people in my new home, I pondered on the next course of action. It took a moment before I finally decided I could move onto what I came here to do:
Remaking the connector and burning this world to the ground.
I left the noise of the canteen and went to the hangar. Perusing the rows of boxes on the ship containing all of our metals that hadn’t been set aside for regular crafting, I gradually got the list of needed materials sorted. This was a project long in coming, but I finally had the means to complete it and the time to do so. However many months or years that took.