Chantelle and I reached the druid's floor one flight of stairs down from the upper fortress doorway. Barr and Gaal were on guard there again.

"Hello." I said fluidly, using the beast people's language. "Could one of you guide us to Greta and Michael Warder please?"

I had gotten a lot of exposure to the proper forms of the language from the presence I had in their storytelling room and had no problem speaking in complete and natural sounding sentences.

"Certainly, my lord." Gaal said, nodding to Barr.

Barr opened the vine doorway leading into the entrance hall of the druids and held it open as we followed him through. He led us through the main hallway out to the fields and turned right once we were out of the stone buildings. There was a large blue canvas tent that was pitched so that the outer wall of the buildings made up one of the walls of the tent. The top of the tent was touching the ceiling of the floor four and a half meters up, and extended twelve meters into the field. Barr stopped outside of the tent and announced us, then bowed his head to me and left back to the front entrance.

Greta, the rabbit lady healer, came out of the tent.

"Greetings my lord, it is good to see you are yourself again." She said. "Are you back?"

"Hello Greta." I said. "Not yet. I got Chantelle, as you can see, but I still need to get the rest of the Warder Clan villagers. We have some time while I'm preparing, so I brought Chantelle to see her father."

"He's through here." Greta said, backing into the tent and holding the flap open for us.

The inside of the tent was lit with a soft warm light and it was one big room. There weren't many people in the room, but there were rows of raised mattresses on the floor. Greta led us to one at the back of the tent where Michael Warder was sleeping. Greta looked to me and touched his forehead at my nod.

Michael's eyes flew open, flicking from Greta to Chantelle and then to me. He bared his teeth in a snarl and leapt to his feet, shoving Greta hard enough to make her stumble backwards. He placed himself between Chantelle and I and sent a crushing force against me. I flooded myself with my power to prevent my bones from cracking and then sent my power to soak into him. I'd had some time to think about the last time he had attacked me with this spell.

Greta was standing up from where she had fallen against the canvas side of the tent. I modified Michael, changing a thousand small things briefly before changing them back. The pressure disappeared as he fell to his knees from the overwhelming pain. This sort of attack wouldn't work on anyone that I hadn't spent time forcing their mana to accept me, and it was much simpler to kill people in any case. I drew my sword, holding it in front of his face so that he had a physical threat to focus on, and stopped the pain. He stiffened as he came back to his senses.

"I brought your daughter to see you." I said. "We are going to rescue the rest of your villagers. I thought you might have wanted to join us, but now I think I would rather leave you asleep. If you attack any of my people again I will kill you."

I turned to face Chantelle. "I'm going to go prepare to break back into the keep." I said. "Come and see me in my room when you are ready. And get my attention over our connection if your father does anything stupid."

I checked on Greta, who was fine, and then left Chantelle with her father.

I headed back to the main stairway of my fortress and then down to the warding room. Maaata, the goat lady enchanter, was there, and it looked as though she had set herself up in the room. There was a mess of components that I assumed had something to do with enchanting all over the table and floor.

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"My lord." She said, hurriedly shoving things from the table to clear it. "Sorry for the mess. I was just-"

I waved my hand, dismissing it. "Don't worry about it." I said. "You were working on projects. I'm just here to form up a mana crystal for myself."

The main unit of currency that I had been using in my trades were mana crystals, but I had to keep borrowing the seed mana crystal to duplicate from and the source material to make it out of. With my new thread portal to my Pocket Dimension so long as I had a mana crystal there I could make as many mana crystals as I wanted.

I used the stone source from my Pocket Dimension and made a small mana crystal that I then stored in my Pocket Dimension. I still had ten minutes left before the portal was done. Time enough to get back into the keep where Chantelle's villagers were being kept. I would come back to get her when I had an easy portal back in.

I headed back up the stairs to the doorway into my Pocket Dimension. Once there I opened the thread portal that I had last left in the alleyway across from the keep in the Fortress of the Gods by unbinding the two sides of the thread from each other. Opening it a small amount I made a hole that I could look through and found the opposite wall of the alleyway. The portal was exactly where I'd left it.

I formed it into a doorway and stepped through into the city of the Fortress of the Gods. I shrank the thread portal behind me and bunched it up into a ball. Walking to the entrance of the alleyway I threw it in an exact match of the trajectory that I threw the last portal, so it should land in the same place.

With that done I joined the traffic heading around the keep, walking for the few minutes it would take to complete the thread portal that I was working on. Rather than cross the road with its mad jam of wagons I turned along one of the roads headed away from the keep. There was an alleyway halfway down the block and I casually turned into it.

The alleyway I was in joined up with the alleyway that ran through the block the other way and I turned into it out of easy sight of the main roads. A glance over my shoulder showed that no one had followed me. I placed the newly formed thread portal against the wall and shaped it into a doorway, stepped through, and collapsed it to a single line.

There were no problems extending the ball thread portal into a doorway and stepping onto the roof of the keep, collecting the thread portal to go in my pocket. I made my way to the edge of the roof and jumped down onto the same stone balcony that I had used last time. I landed with a crack of stone, but this time the balcony fell away beneath me.

I had fallen out of reach of the handles of the door by the time my perception of time had slowed, and I considered what I could do. Forming the thread portal into an opening large enough to squeeze through would take too long, I'd hit the ground before I could reshape it. I calculated the amount of force that I would have to withstand from the fall.

Forty meters, onto stone and the remains of the balcony that was falling beneath me. My assessment was that it would be slightly damaging, but that both my enhanced muscles and reinforcing my body would make it non-lethal.

I shoved against the balcony as I was falling so that I would land to the side of it. I hit the ground in a three-point landing and came away relatively unscathed, I had done more damage to my muscles from sprinting, though my organs weren't used to the abuse.

The stone of the balcony had made quite a lot of noise when it hit the ground, so I used my thread portal to retreat back to my Pocket Dimension. It only took a few minutes of refreshing my body at bearable levels of pain before I was back to perfect condition.

Chantelle arrived towards the end of my repairs, and she had her father with her. They both entered my Pocket Dimension, and I looked warily at Michael. I was a bit uncomfortable with him being so close to the hardware that was running my digital side. Though he would have to physically attack it to do any damage when he didn't have access to mana.

I opened my mouth to speak but was surprised when Michael bowed to me, a full ninety degree bow from the waist.

"I apologise for my actions." Michael said. "It has been a stressful time. And I am not used to not being in control. When I saw Chantelle I saw you as a threat and moved to protect her."

I was getting a mix of emotions from Chantelle, a fading anger, some nervousness, stubbornness, hope, and a small amount of embarrassment. I didn't know what half of that was about, but the anger was probably from yelling at her father, or maybe that I'd disappeared back to the city, and the hope would be that I accept his apology. I raised an eyebrow at Chantelle and she nodded.

I sighed. "I accept your apology." I said. "I take it you wish to come with us?"

"Yes." He said, standing back upright.

"And if I say no?" I asked.

He glanced at Chantelle. "Then I would stay here." He said.

I nodded and reformed the thread portal into a doorway to the inner courtyard of the keep in the Fortress of the Gods. Looking through showed it to be empty and I stepped through. I turned back to Michael.

"Come along, then." I said.