That night and the next passed by in a haze. The Gossamyr felt like a distant thing, and the memories of my childhood proved to be a haunting burden. Everyone, even Amaranthine, seemed content to give me space to deal with what had happened in Havenstone, but on the third day, Claire barged into my quarters.

“I’m leaving,” Claire opened the conversation with.

Indeed, Claire had stormed in already in her armor, the Ethereal Lantern hanging on her belt and her bow on her back.

“To?” I asked.

“I’m going to find the people who escaped Havenstone. The faster I find them, the better their chances of survival will be,” Claire said.

The absolute faith and conviction felt good to see in someone, but I also envied her the hope that still burned in her heart. My hope wallowed in the ashes of Havenstone, where Dad and Etienne died. Once her hope would have been contagious, and I would’ve jumped up to help her. Instead, I felt only a cynical fear that she would be too late to help anyone. My presence seemed like it would hurt more than it helped.

“Who’s going with you?” I asked. It seemed beyond obvious to me that at least one of our friends would go with her.

“Miyuki offered to travel with me, and I took her up on it. Between the two of us we should be able to handle anything we come across. She’s crazy good with those swords and offered to teach me what she knows of fighting with a bladed bow, too.” Claire answered confidently.

I nodded.

“Chrys made me this,” Claire showed off a copper cylinder to me. “It’s a copy of your Portal ability. If you feel a new doorway open on your network, could you please bring us back?”

“That’s a great idea. I’ll keep alert for new doorways.”

“You should construct a fallback door above the Plate in Monados proper. Bringing everyone to the Spire is an unnecessary risk,” Arx Maxima said when she spoke telepathically to me.

I’ll do that today. I mentally responded to Arx Maxima, before I stood and hugged Claire.

“Good luck. I hope you find your family,” I said. I hoped she would find success, we’d found more than enough despair.

“You going to be okay here? I’ve never seen a dragon in a fluffy bath robe before, and I’m afraid if you show that look off to Amaranthine she’s going to dump you for someone less ridiculous looking.” Claire asked with a touch of genuine concern. Her concern quickly gave way to making fun of me.

“Hah hah,” I mock laughed. Sparks of black lightning fizzled and arced around my mouth, which took my desire for a that’s not funny glare into a more sinister degree.

Claire rolled her eyes at me, instead of taking it seriously.

“I’ll be back soon. You’ve got a town to build. Have a few nice buildings up before I get back, so our friends will have a place to live. Okay?” Claire grinned.

Mistwalkers lived in a universe where their imagined outcomes could become true reality. Claire had determined there were survivors and decided she would be the one to find them. Could that belief echo across the Gossamyr to make it happen? I hoped so.

“I’ll have homes waiting,” I promised. “Good luck.”

“I don’t need luck. I’m the best,” Claire scoffed.

“Mmhmm. Sure. That’s why you’re taking a companion whose race is famed for good luck with you?” I snorted gusts of black wind that disrupted Claire’s hair and left a lingering echo of malaise in the air itself that clung to existence as if afraid to go back to nothingness.

“Hey, Miyuki being a Kitsune has nothing to do with it. Remy wanted to come, but felt he needed to stay with Coralie for a bit, and I agreed. Everyone else isn’t exactly going to help my cause for recruiting people. Xian is strange and terrifying, Chrys is inhuman, and Amaranthine is strange, terrifying, and inhuman. No offense.” Claire told my shadow.

Claire had a point. She was the only member of our party that remained human. Is that what happened when humans were exposed to the Gossamyr? They were changed into other races by forces magic, evolutionary, and mysterious? Miyuki could at least pass for human, unlike me.

“Go on, we’ll be here when you get back,” I promised.

We hugged again, and Claire waved herself off. Miyuki waved at me from the doorway, and I saluted her. That was how they departed.

It didn’t take long before I crawled out of my suite, clad in my armor.

“How do I get down to the Plate?”

Arx Maxima answered my question with action. The world around me bubbled and warped, then I stood on black dirt. The Plate went on for seemingly forever from down here, and the Spire towered over the central plate like an omniscient god, full of ominous judgement. Would it still feel that way when we had built a city down here? I hoped not.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“If you upgrade Create Wall the process of building a city will be much more convenient for you,” Arx Maxima suggested.

“Please explain,” I asked.

“There are multiple ways to upgrade abilities. The easiest way is to add modifiers to the ability, either additional uses, or riders. For example, you could create a binding option for your walls with Create Wall that would make it easier to do structures. The most effective way to build a city would be to upgrade Create Wall to Create Building. Come,” Arx Maxima invited my mind to follow hers telepathically.

I closed my eyes and obeyed.

Arx Maxima brought me into a mental sub-space.

“In virtual spaces like this you could prepare a design with the ability Create Building. Walls, floors, roof, windows, wiring, plumbing, and ventilation can all be placed and when you have a design you are satisfied with it can be saved to our databanks for instant deployment via Create Building. With planning you could fabricate an entire village in minutes.”

I didn’t know a damn thing about 3D models, Computer-aided Design, or architecture, but a wealth of knowledge bubbled in my mind from Arx Maxima. The basic of basics, really. But it was enough that I saw the overwhelming potential of Create Building over the far simpler Create Wall.

“How do I upgrade Create Wall?”

“You must first entrench yourself within the possibilities of Create Wall. Test the way you can shift soil to the sides with the manifestation of a wall. Play with the way walls can conjoin, and learn the situations in which they will not. Think about the nature of buildings in relation to me, Arx Maxima. I am the Ultimate Fortress. What does that mean for buildings made in my image?”

I wondered about that.

“Create Wall only works with EternaStone. Create Building would be more effective if it could also produce other materials.”

“Wealth of the Enclave gives you access to my storage vaults. If you upgrade Create Building properly, you will be able to draw on more than EternaStone. If you locate one of my lost Plates with a transmatter configurator, we could process EternaStone into nearly any material, even those not stored in my Vaults.”

“That will have to wait until Claire comes back,” I grunted. I saw the appeal of a transmatter configurator, but Claire was my Mistwalker. I could only teleport to places I had left a portal.

“I could trade with Granix for crystal to make windows,” I mused.

“First you must upgrade your ability. Worry about additional materials after you have accomplished that.”

“Right,” I grunted.

So, I played with Create Wall. I made huge vertical walls, long horizontal walls. I built tiny walls the size of my thumb and tried to stick them together. I crafted cubes, and trapezoids. Piece by piece I constructed an elaborate house as tall as me with 4” x 2” rectangular blocks.

Building things this way felt slow. It took me close to three hours to make the block house. Things I learned? Well, EternaStone simplified a lot of aspects of architectural engineering. Its nearly indestructible nature meant load bearing just sort of worked unless I really went out of my way to make big open spaces without supports. If I made a building look like ones I’d seen my whole life then structural integrity didn’t seem to be a concern at all. I vaguely recalled structural integrity being one of the main things the builders in Havenstone always talked about, but only in a strange déjà vu sort of way, because Arx Maxima had included ideas like structural integrity in the basic information she’d shifted to my mind.

“Hey, Arx. Wasn’t that Melchior guy supposed to be all about cities, and stuff?”

“Affirmative, Melchior is incredibly knowledgeable in those areas. Awakening fell slightly behind schedule due to other factors. Would you like me to reprioritize the awakening process for Melchior?”

“Let’s not push it too hard. I don’t know how long it will take me to upgrade Create Wall.”

“Understood. Melchior’s synthetic consciousness will be ready to awaken in three days. Once prepared, we can proceed with activation at any time.”

Three days seemed like plenty of time.

Two days later, I stood laughing like a mad man as chaos storms flickered far below me. Arx Maxima didn’t tell me that it usually took someone months to upgrade their first skill, and ignorant of the difficulty of the task, I accomplished it in under forty-eight hours.

I couldn’t celebrate the incredible achievement too much. Arx Maxima had guided me through it, and I had a suspicion that the link between us allowed her to influence me and my thought processes. How else would the computational advantages of being linked to her work?

I don’t know if it was the link to Arx Maxima, the loss of Etienne and Dad, or that I buried my head and worked diligently on it. Even in the Academy, once I set my mind to learning things, I learned them. It didn’t matter if it was mental or physical, and that dogged stubbornness seemed to translate to payoff in the more complicated arena of ability upgrading.

Or maybe it was the brief window of time with my brain not being scrambled by Amaranthine’s glamour, or Corvusol’s authority.

“None of the above,” Arx Maxima answered my worries.

“Then what changed?” I asked.

“You transitioned to Citrine. While your Strength, Agility, and Vitality all increased, so did your Essence. Your mental faculties have all improved, and it seems the Cloak of Gadreel pushed further Tenebrous Dragon brain development to occur.”

“So, what, I’m smarter now?”

“Perhaps mature is the better word? Dying may have also added perspective you previously lacked,” Arx Maxima chimed into my mind.

“While on the topic of maturity. Amaranthine has requested your presence to discuss the state of the Empire of Monados. Your mother wishes to speak with you. She desires you to enkindle new concepts. Xian requests your presence for dinner tonight with himself and Remy. Chrys has a report to make, and Corvusol has suggestions on where to find inhabitants to fill your new city with.”

I groaned. Two days of peace and quiet had felt.. very much needed. Spending hour after hour working out the intricacies of my powers had been a low key, much needed, break from the events of the Gossamyr. Even so, my hearts beat faster simply hearing Amaranthine’s name, and thinking her name led to my mind being filled with the seductive scent of roses.

“Alright. Let’s go. Can you transfer the schematics you mentioned earlier into my Create Building library?”

“Done,” Arx Maxima answered.

I reviewed blueprints and plans in my mind, while also making the trek back to the Spire. It felt odd to so easily split my mind, but looking at schematics or creating designs in the virtual space of Create Building took almost none of my mental attention.

At least, that’s what I deluded myself into thinking. After I walked into three different walls on my way to find Amaranthine, I realized walking and building weren’t very compatible.