Chantelle woke my biological side briefly as she got up, but kissed me back to sleep. She was going to test things. I still had two hours of carving until the portal was done, so I decided to experiment with making music with the instruments from my dream.

The storytelling room on the druid floor was empty and I used that room for my tests. I could have done it in a simulation, but I felt the need to use it as an expression, pushing it out into the world. After the first few minutes I got a rhythm and beat that I was happy with and started tracing lyrics through it in the beast people's language.

It was very well suited to singing, being very musical by itself. I started making the sequences more complex, using the characteristics of the room to play with the different frequencies. There were patterns of sound that evoked emotion and I was working out the nuances of hope and new beginnings when the sound that the room was creating changed, absorbing the higher frequencies instead of reflecting them. I adapted to the change and pulled up the video feed. Beast people were crowding into the room.

Whoops. I had been pushing the volume louder to get a clearer response from the stone walls. And if there was no one in the room then it was probably sleeping time. I drew the piece I was working on to a close, withdrawing one instrument at a time until there was a single cello and then even that fell silent after a final long bass note. The entire room stood in silence, not moving. I checked the progress on the thread portal and I had done about an hour of work on it since beginning with the music experiment.

"Ahem." I said. "Sorry."

I really had almost nailed the feeling of hope by the end there. The room broke out into muttering and someone was pushed through the crowd to where my presence was in the corner. Finally the person made it through into the empty space that was left around me, stepping between two bear people, and it turned out to be Ian, the rabbit man that I had healed.

"My lord." Ian said, bowing low. "That was... Moving and uplifting. Thank you, from all of us."

"Uh, you're welcome." I said.

Really I was just trying it out, and I needed more hope just now. I hadn't expected an audience. Though after consideration I should have made myself a new room somewhere to practice. Oh well, I'm sure my people could do with some hope too.

I started generating some low-key background music as the beast people began leaving the room.

"Ian." I said as he was about to leave, being one of the last people there. "Could you get Greta to send me the first person please."

"Yes my lord." Ian said.

I went to pull up a video feed from the portal nexus room and realised that I hadn't installed a presence there yet. I moved one into the ceiling looking downwards. Bala and Brutus, the two ox men guards, were standing in the middle of the room between the two open portals.

"Brutus, you put yourself on guard duty here?" I asked.

He glanced up at the roof before looking back towards the portal leading out of the fortress, to the human's old village.

"This is the only place in the fortress that truly requires guarding." Brutus said. "I am best placed at the vanguard of our defences."

"Are there any villagers still over there?" I asked.

"I don't know, my lord." Brutus said. "There hasn't been anyone through for half an hour, but I could send someone to check for you?"

"That won't be necessary." I said. "I'm going to be moving the external portal to its own room."

The portal room would have its own presence if someone needed to get back. I moved it and the portal to the human floor into their rooms, leaving just the druid floor portal in the nexus room.

The first of my druid patients had arrived at the portal at the bottom of my fortress, a possum man that was missing his tail. Greta was with him, and they were both looking into the small stone room that the portal now led to.

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"Hello Greta." I said. "If this is my first patient there is a small problem. I need something to base my repairs from, and I don't have a possum tail. Could you get a possum person so that I can get a scan of them? It will be completely painless for them. Oh, and you can use the portal on your floor, there is no need to come all the way down the stairs."

I moved the exit of the portal so that it was next to the druid floor portal exit.

"Of course, my lord." Greta said, stepping through the portal.

I didn't have a room for healing, having turned the last one into the portal nexus room, so I spent the few minutes that Greta was gone getting a possum person volunteer to build one. Just a simple three meter by three meter room in my Pocket Dimension with a stone table in it. I copied the feather filled comforter from my copy of Chantelle's bed to make the stone comfortable.

Greta still wasn't back by the time I set it all up. I invited the possum man into the new room after moving the portal to it. I may as well get his mana to accept me and get a scan of him while we waited. He settled down on his side on the table and I pushed my power against him.

"Your mana will drain to about half and then I will be able to scan you." I said. "This part won't be painful. You are aware that my form of healing is extremely painful?"

"Yes lord C.C." He said. "You... Where are you?"

"My physical body is sleeping." I said. "I can see and speak with you from one of my presences, which is in the ceiling of the room. Like the one that is in the storyteller room."

He stayed quiet for the few minutes it took to get his mana to accept me, and then I began to make a full scan of his body. I was halfway through when Greta brought another possum person, a woman, through into the portal nexus room.

"You'll need to step back through while I move the exit of the portal." I said.

Greta nodded and I moved the portal to exit into the healing room. I needed to make a full doorway sized portal to transfer people within my Pocket Dimension.

"I can only scan one person at a time." I said. "And I'm just finishing up his scan. I was slightly curious, beast people are a species. How do children work? I haven't seen any mixed beast halves, but there aren't enough of you for beast species to match up."

"Any two beast people of opposite genders can have children." Greta said. "And the children can be either of their parent's beast type, or one of their grandparents. It gets a little bit complicated with eggs and live births, but that comes down to the mother's beast type."

"An ox beast person could hatch from an egg?" I asked.

"It has happened, yes." Greta said. "From a bird or reptile type mother."

All of the beast people women that I had seen had breasts, at least, so they all had the ability to breastfeed their young.

I was able to push my power against the possum woman while I was scanning the possum man, and as soon as I was done with his scan I switched over to scanning the possum woman. It was a simple matter then to copy the tail from her scan to his. Some tweaks so that the thickness and length of the tail was larger to match the size of the stub that was left and I was ready to start.

"I am ready to start." I said. "I don't mind if you two stay or not. This is also your last chance to back out."

Greta and the possum woman moved to the side of the room, but stayed.

"I am ready, my lord." The possum man said. "However it turns out, thank you for trying."

"The last thing I will tell you is this, the pain will feel endless, but it will end." I said. "When it is done there will be no more pain."

The possum man nodded and I triggered the program. He didn't scream or make any noise. It actually looked as though he had passed out, going entirely limp. It took twenty five seconds for his tail to be completely regrown. But the man wasn't moving.

"It's done." I said. "It shouldn't have been possible for him to pass out, though. His heart is still beating, though slowly."

"It is the possum people's beast type ability." Greta said. "In highly stressful situations they feign dead. It isn't something they can control, he should be coming out of it soon."

A few moments later the possum man sat up, curling his tail around in front of him and feeling up and down its length.

"Still sane and with us?" I asked.

"Yes my lord." He said. "Thank you. It was as painful as I was told, even through feigning death which shuts everything down I could feel it. But I have my tail again, and it is completely my tail. I was worried I would have Betsy's tail."

Greta took the two possum people out of the healing room and returned a minute later with the elderly owl woman. Her healing was more involved, having to refresh every cell in her body to remove the junk and errors that had built up, but still easy to do.

After her were two cat people, each missing their right arms, and then a badger man who had lost both his legs. I needed a second badger person to scan to heal him, badger people's legs aren't built the same as anyone else I had a scan of. And finally a gecko man that was missing both of his arms. He was the only difficult case, as he was the only gecko man among the druids.

It took me some time but I eventually made a mix of my own arms and his feet, for the adhesive effect and layout of the hands and fingers. When it was done he said it was different than his old arms but they worked equally well. None of the people healed had any problems with sanity.

By the time I was done with the gecko man I had the forty meter thread portal done and was ready to start working on the Forest Keeper floor.