The most important thing that came from sleeping was the fact that I had, in fact, successfully slept in the shadow of the supposedly haunted plateau. I admit I felt a bit of hubris, both looking back at the night before and on waking up safely in the morning; I felt like all the ghost stuff must have been hogwash. As I thought about it through breakfast, I could at least intellectually admit to myself that it didn't need to be hogwash for me to have slept one night safely--Miun had said it came with the blood moon, or maybe with the full moon. Either way, I'd have to see.

After choking down some stuff that really shouldn't have qualified as breakfast, I found myself sitting on the roof and thinking about expanding the tower again. It left me thinking about what I really needed; a bedroom for myself, a dedicated work space, a kitchen and dining space, relaxation space apart from my bedroom, storage, and maybe guest bedrooms, at least for the other four heroes. If the first basement became storage and the second basement was the teleportation anchor, that was at least eight stories aboveground. I looked up at the cliff overhead; the plateau was probably a thousand feet over the lower hills near the town, but it was maybe five-six hundred feet straight up from the base of my tower. Six hundred feet would be... well, given my existing layout, maybe fifty stories? Now that I thought about it, it'd be better to have fewer stories and taller rooms, in case I needed the space for something. Better to redo the tower now, at four stories, than be forced to adapt later.

The thought of planning a tower that large also made me worry about my foundation. Even though I'd added vacuum voids to the stone and lightened the load a little from that, there was a very real chance that the tower base would fail because of something deep underground, given just how much stone was going to go into it.

I started by checking on Carli, who had found shrubs nearby to eat and was happily standing on a large rock. I'd planned on taking most of the loose boulders for materials, and asked her if she had a favorite rock she wanted to keep, to which she immediately pointed out, like, four of them. Considering I'd just sprung the question on her, I decided to start by taking small things and removing anything that would let a person climb the wall immediately next to the tower--I included Carli in that, for obvious reasons--so that there would be no easy way to get access to the higher floors except by going through the tower, or using magic, which I figured that someday I'd have a way to block.

That thought, though, made me consider running structural beams between the tower and the cliff, just to make sure that the weight wasn't going to end up being too much. It could start relatively high up, and I could make the cliffs all around it slick. I looked up at it for a while, considering as I did that I could also build rooms into the cliff such that you could only access them from the tower, and smiled quietly to myself. The two thoughts together made a nice single whole, and I appreciated that.

After thinking about it for a while, I basically destroyed the whole tower and started over; the only real losses were my cold room and oven, and neither of those was I happy with yet. I made the basement just a touch deeper, and sat in the bottom and concentrated really hard in order to slowly develop an enormous, foot-thick footprint twice as wide as the tower that was a single piece of fused stone, perfectly level and essentially impossible to budge for those without divine powers or a similar level of being frightfully overpowered. Then I made a new wall for the basement floors that was extra thick, fused to the base, and perfectly round, then added the diamond cross-beams and floors to get me back to ground level.

I paused for a while, looking at the cliff, and then decided arbitrarily that the tenth floor would be the first one that connected to the cliffside, then went out and collected a bunch of loose stone. I found Carli glaring at something that I had to work to discover was a fox in hiding in the distance, and praised her for keeping us safe before going back to work. With my extra material, I made a tower five stories tall that was just a little bit thinner than the basement walls, and had a few voids in it, and then added five more stories that were a bit thinner still, with more voids. For the floor of the last story I added, I made the diamond crossbeams very thick and ran them a good hundred feet into the cliffside, which was doubtless overkill, considering that I honestly wasn't even sure that the beams would do anything to hold up the weight of the tower.

Either way, I spent a little while adding stone floors and a ceiling to the tower, then turned the support beams into a bridge and carved open a room in the cliffside, a room that I genuinely had no use for but knew I would eventually. Only then did I go back and add staircases again, making the tower usable by normal people.

Colin! I was sitting on the tower looking at the cliff when I heard my goat calling me. People!

I looked, and found that several townspeople had made their way out towards the tower, and were now staring in shock as they discovered what I'd done. I felt a little self-conscious, as I should have; I'd been so intent, before, about being normal, and then thrown it all away as soon as I had an excuse to start playing around with stone. Which... this was fun, and satisfying, and I felt like I had been... unpleasantly held back by not being able to flex my new muscles, but it did make it very hard for me to be... normal.

Not that I was ever going to be normal, I realized, as I hopped off the top of the tower and caught myself again just above the ground. I could pretend to be, but I wasn't.

As I got closer, I discovered that many of the gawkers were young adults, plus Heglid and one of the elders--the one who had joined the group yesterday but suggested that maybe me bringing business to town was a good thing. The young adults gawked at what I'd done, and at me as I approached.

"Hello, Heglid," I said, nodding around. "I haven't been introduced to most of these people--"

"You don't do things by halves," said the elder, sounding impressed. "Is that some arcane implement to further your power? A talisman to protect the world from evil?"

"Just a building, so far," I said, feeling embarrassed that he--they all, probably--expected it to be some kind of tool. Though, I supposed, it would be, once I had the teleportation circle inscribed. "Arcane glyphs and that sort of thing are better left to one of the other... one of my other friends." Now that I was put to it, calling myself a Hero in front of a bunch of young men and women seemed... grandstand-y.

I did my best to ignore the enormous, towering, vaguely phallic double standard that I had just been building and focused on being humble in my words, at the very least.

"Can you, like, call power from the gods? Smite your foes with lightning? Can you make me fly?" One of the young men seemed like he had gotten lost in a story he was building in his head somewhere and I really wasn't sure what exactly he was thinking or where the ideas had specifically come from.

I wanted to casually reference how divine the bracers were, but bit my tongue to stop myself. I took a deep breath, thought for a minute, and shook my head.

"I can do some interesting things," I said, "but not everything, and I'm not going to give away all my secrets, so, ssh." I put a finger to my lips, and the boy nodded, giving me the best 'yeah you can totally smite people with lightning, I get you' look he possibly could.

"I wanted to ask what you could possibly do for the town," said the elder, and I couldn't help being irritated. "Certainly, with your power," he gestured, "there are some things you could do to help all of us out."

Having been put to it, I understood the trap. I had reasons not to screw everything up by making everything about me, but it was too late to deny that I was extremely powerful. I could, once I got samples of materials from Alice or from traders, mass produce all kinds of things and turn this sleepy little town into the center of my own empire, if I really wanted--a trade empire, or a militant one, once I had steel and gunpowder. To turn around and deny that I was capable of it would make me look like either a cheapass, a liar, or an idiot, and it was even odds, as far as I was concerned, which of those the people would settle on.

Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned at him. "I intend to take things a little slower than you might wish," I said, doing my best to sound stern, though from the looks everyone gave me, I could have put on my best Micky Mouse voice and they would have been intimidated. "It's not my intention to replace people who have spent their whole lives learning a trade. I don't mind helping people by creating the right tools for people to do work they want to do, but I'm not going to just," I gestured vaguely, and I could tell at least one of the boys wondered if what I just did had deep arcane meaning, "whip up a batch of legendary swords and let you all sell them."

"But you could do that," blurted out someone.

"There are a lot of things I can do that I shouldn't," I answered. "That's why I'm going to take things a little slowly and try not to make too many blunders along the way. If people have a real need for something, especially if they can't get it from one of the townsfolk or traders, I'm happy to help, but if someone else can do it, maybe I shouldn't."

"Even if you could do it better?" asked another young man, sounding incredulous, and also extremely cynical.

"I don't want to replace people who've done a job their whole lives," I repeated. "I'll take care of myself, and I can help people, but--"

"Can I get a home like yours?" One of the few women in the audience, who seemed kind of tomboyish but wasn't charming at all as far as I was concerned, spoke over me.

"Do you really need one?" I shook my head. "If I start handing out big favors, it'll tear the town apart. Surely you understand that."

I don't think they did. Maybe Heglid did, and maybe the elder understood, but the younger ones definitely looked at me as though I was telling them that skateboarding was not, in fact, cool, when they knew for a fact that it was.

So after a brief pause, I shrugged. "You can ask," I said, "but I'll say no."

"But you said you'd help," the girl insisted.

"If you don't need it, it doesn't help."

"I need a house. Why can't I get one like yours?"

"When you can make one yourself," I purred in her direction, "you can."

She flushed, and at least one of the boys in the audience clearly got upset with me on her behalf, but I ignored the byplay.

"In the end," I summarized, clapping my hands, "I'll decide what I do. Just because you want me to, and just because I can, doesn't mean I will. But if you need me, I'll be there."

Most of the younger people grumbled. Heglid, though, looked thoughtful, and I looked at him directly, inviting him to speak.

It took him a moment to notice. "Oh... begging your pardon, sir Hero," he said that without any irony, which was fine, but also without any sense of worship, which I appreciated more. "I wanted to ask if you had anything you'd like to request. There's likely to be a caravan in the next day or two, and if there is coin in it, traders will go to a nearby city and bring things back relatively quickly. I tend to do those negotiations..."

"I'll think on it," I said, feeling a little bad that I was planning on making for myself or getting from Alice almost anything that I could request right now. "Probably the things I need most right now are a good bed and a well-made stove."

The elder's eyebrows rose. "You plan to cook for yourself, or hiring someone?"

I hadn't really thought about hiring help, though that wasn't a bad idea, especially while I didn't have anything in the tower I was worried about getting stolen. I could just lock, or physically block off, access to the basement or other sensitive areas. "I might hire help later," I said, "but I don't have enough finished here to live on my own, let alone put in a helper."

"At the rate you're going, it won't take long."

I laughed, good-naturedly. "You aren't wrong," I said, "but I also have duties I have to attend to starting soon. That's why I wanted to get the tower finished."

The elder's eyebrows rose again, but he didn't ask.

"If all goes well, you won't even notice, or possibly my friends will wander into town, as though from nowhere. No booming voices, this time."

Heglid shifted nervously. "Not coming on a caravan?"

"They're people like me," I said with a smile. "Strange and powerful people busy with their own problems. But don't worry, they're not taking the place of traders, either."

That seemed to relieve him, though I admit it was partly a lie, since Alice bringing materials removes one of the key things I would otherwise have asked Heglid to do for me. Still, he nodded, looking better about the whole thing.

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"Is it true this place is haunted?" asked one of the young men, suddenly.

"It wasn't last night," I answered, "but if it turns out that it is, I'll deal with it. Don't you worry. But for now," I clapped my hands, "unless there's something else, I should get back to work." That wasn't so much true, as I knew that people in a small town, if they lacked something to do, could sit around for hours and talk. And while I could do that... I wanted to have some things done before tonight.

They didn't disperse, but I walked away anyway, and pretty soon I had set aside five floors for rooms--before realizing that a thirty-foot diameter tower was too much room for an empty bedroom with little but a hammock in it. So I made the second floor, just above ground floor, my own master bedroom, then a common area, then two floors that were split into two bedrooms each. The internal walls that blocked off the bedrooms from each other and the stairs were carbon supports holding stone panels in place, and after considering it for a bit, I filled the wall separating the two bedrooms with aerogel, on the theory it would make sound-deadening insulation, though I wasn't sure of that. I made crude armoires out of stone and iron for each bedroom, since for some reason I couldn't make my power create wood without a sample, and provided tables and chairs in each room and in the common area.

I really needed a kitchen, so I put that above the two levels of guest rooms, settling for a less impressively sized cooler and a much smaller grill for cooking, plus plenty of countertop space, a lot of cabinets, and a pantry for dry goods. I was starting to be reminded, though, of the need for toilets, and so I got to that next, plumbing a simple drop chute that ran down a concealed pipe into a crude septic system that I buried nearby. I was pretty sure a proper septic system involved more than a tank, but... well, first things first, after all.

Of course, proper sanitation meant running water, and I didn't have that, but I made a storage tank at the top of the tower and was able to just magically wish water into it, then piped that to the kitchen and toilets with pure copper tubes. I... didn't want to create a proper bath until I had a way to heat the water, since that was not something my power did, but at least it felt doable. Maybe just a fire and a heat exchanger?

Fussing around soon enough turned the clock from morning to evening, and I contacted Jessica from my basement around dusk, as planned. I found her sitting at a table with a big piece of paper spread before her, and mentally tapped her shoulder to start the conversation.

[ ...Colin? ] She seemed surprised that I was there, which was a little confusing.

[ Is this a bad time? I know I'm early. ]

[ No, I just... didn't feel you connect. ] She frowned.

[ I suppose after your display, I default to being too subtle, ] I answered. [ I'm surprised you can't tell, though. ] Well, mostly. After she... didn't notice me last night, I did get the impression that I was quiet enough to snoop, though I wasn't interested in that.

Jessica gestured to the paper in front of her. [ Can you read this? ]

[ No. I can't exactly see, and can't hear, although I get a vague sense of what's around. ]

[ That makes this difficult. Hmm... ]

[ Can you hold the figure in your mind? ]

Jessica just stared at the paper. [ It's pretty complicated. ]

I considered for a long moment, meditating on the way my bracers worked, and getting a vague sense from them that this was doable, without any real specifics. After a long moment, a thought occurred to me, one at least partly sourced from the artifacts. [ How about this. I'm going to try to create a mental canvas, and you draw on it. ]

It took some concentration, but I was able to do just that, holding what was essentially a blank sheet of paper in between our two minds that she began drawing a figure on. As she'd suggested, it was very complicated--too much for me to analyze even when we finished and I got a good look at it. Prior to that, I was too busy to do anything else but hold the canvas.

She finished the figure and double, then triple checked it, before giving me a mental nod. [ That's it. ]

I was able to carve that exact image on the floor of my basement with no trouble whatsoever. [ Okay, ] I sent back. [ It's engraved. What do we have to do to power it? ]

[ The blank area between the two crescent moons, ] Jess tried to explain, though her mental picture was better than her words to explain it. [ You should be able to focus on creating an energy pattern there that serves as a key, one that touches each of the two moons exactly once. Only someone that knows the same key can use it, and only as long as you hold the pattern in place. ]

For a demonstration, I used a simple rendition of the Superman logo, and darned if the pattern didn't flood the entire teleport anchor with power. I was impressed. [ Okay, that seems to work. ]

[ Great. I'll gather the others and we can come over... if you're ready? ]

[ There's nothing going on here, ] I confirmed. [ Did Alice find my stuff? ]

[ She's been out doing something all day, but I don't know what. Call me back in ten minutes? ]

I sent her a wordless confirmation and broke the link, then went scouting around to make sure there was nothing else that needed doing. I found Carli standing in my doorway and staring at me, and I realized I'd been ignoring her all day. I knelt down and gave her a bunch of rubs and scratches, before deciding that she might as well come down with me, so that I could thoroughly confuse the other Heroes as soon as humanly possible.

It might have been five or twenty minutes before I decided ten minutes had passed--without a clock, it was hard to tell, and how was I going to calibrate a clock even if I could build one? But when I called Jessica back, I could tell all four heroes were gathered in someone's bedroom, and I smirked to myself before initializing the teleporter pad with Superman again, and sending Jessica an OK, and the image.

I had kind of imagined that I would be more taxed for being on the receiving end of the teleporter, but even given how my bracers would have taken all the strain, as far as I could tell there was no strain to take. Jessica, being the one who was actually teleporting, must have taken it all, and the only discomfort I felt at all was the brilliant flash of light as the four appeared.

Rude! Carli bleated loudly. Bad light!

"Sorry, Carli," I said, kneeling down. "I should have warned you." And I should have, but also, I was enjoying the fact that everyone's attention was down drawn to my telepathic goat.

"Is that--"

Before Steve could finish his question, Alice rushed forward and gave me a hug, which was... or, well, might have seemed weird to the others, but she'd been a bit more of a touchy-feely person than any of the rest of us. It didn't go beyond that, and maybe it was just a friendly hug and not at all a reflection of my promise to help protect her, no matter what.

"Hi, Alice," I said, feeling a little awkward because it was definitely the first time the two of us had touched aside from shaking hands when we were summoned. I looked around and nodded to each in turn. "John, Jess, Steve."

"Was that--" Steve started to repeat, but Jessica interrupted him.

"Where are we? This building is strange."

"I made myself a tower," I said, "in a small town only a few days away from the capital, really, but I think it's over the border or something. This is Kurnal, and the closest ...city? Is Amash." I frowned. "We're by the stone hills and the passage to Bur'jaal."

John reached into one of his bags, and it was clearly some 'of-holding' variety of bag, because he pulled out a rolled up map that was far longer than the bag was deep, and began to glance over it.

"You made it?" asked Jess.

"Am I the one who's crazy?" whined Steve, still staring at my goat.

"Fabrication is one of the Bracer's main functions," I pointed out. "I intend to make it bigger in time, but it's already mostly empty space."

John laid the map down on the floor, and I realized I was still holding the teleportation anchor, so I released the power to that. That made the room dark, but Alice conjured a ball of beautiful, clear white light with a snap of her fingers, a light that cast no shadows and seemed to illuminate everything cleanly.

Pretty light! beamed Carli, her attention drawn to it immediately.

"And you're a pretty little goat," cooed Alice, kneeling down in front of her. I expect Carli might have shied away from most people, but Alice--the Hero of Purifying Light--was bound to be popular with animals, and Carli moved in eagerly to be pet and scratched.

"So we started here," John said, tapping what I was sure was the capital. "Here's Amash, and here's Bur'jaal. I don't see a Kurnal on this map."

I knelt down and was able to identify the nearby landmarks instantly. "We're probably exactly here," I said, laying a finger on the plateau. "You'll see when we get outside."

"So, are you going to--" Steve started to say something, but I clapped my hands, knowing that I was being an asshole, and interrupted him, just to keep the streak going.

"So let me give you the nickel tour," I said, and gestured to the staircase. "First of the tower, and then of Kurnal, though to be fair, it's definitely a small town, maybe little more than a village."

"What do they do here?"

"Survive," I said solemnly, "and provide water and food to traders passing through. Like I said, it's on the road to Bur'jaal, just before the stone hills." I paused at the foot of the stairs. "For now, this room is the second basement. First basement is for storage, but I don't have anything in it for now." We traveled up through there, Alice's light revealing the next floor to be essentially featureless, and the ground floor wasn't much better. "Ground floor will eventually be for reception, I guess," I said, "I don't have much use for that at the moment."

"Can we look at it from outside?" Jess asked. "It feels insanely solid. It wants to block my magical perception, somehow."

I shrugged, and we took a detour outside. As soon as we were out, Carli bleated and jumped up on a nearby boulder, one of the ones she had identified as a favorite when I asked her what I shouldn't destroy for raw material. I could feel the others a bit surprised and confused when they came out in a hilly region not far from the mountains, but far more confused when they turned around and saw the ten-story tower vastly overshadowed by the plateau behind it.

John whistled. "When you said 'exactly here', you weren't kidding."

I grinned. "You can see it from a long way off. Eventually I hope to make the tower as tall as the plateau, but I'm worried that I'd need to reinforce it structurally to support all that weight."

"You're kidding, right? That's, like, a hundred stories," said Steve, finally managing to complete a sentence without being interrupted.

"Around eighty, I think," I said, gesturing. "The tower is ten, and you can see it's about an eighth of the way up..."

"There's something odd about it," Jess said, and Alice nodded along with her, both of them studying the rock.

I shrugged. "I've been told it's haunted," I admitted, "but I can't sense anything. Do you think it's a problem?"

The two other magic users were quiet for long enough that I started to get nervous.

"No," Alice said, finally. "It's not a vengeful spirit. It's more like... there's something unusual here, and it attracts ghosts."

Jessica nodded. "It feels ancient," she said. "Older than the plateau. Be careful if you dig into the center of it; I think you'll find something there, and it... might be strong."

That, I had to admit, gave me the willies. If one of the other Four Heroes said something was odd, then it was probably bad, but if two said so, I'd have to be careful.

Carli bleated behind us, and I turned to look at her. She sent a message to me without saying it to the others. I want to climb!

Just be safe, I answered, and Carli bleated again, then scampered towards the cliff.

John, in the meantime, had gone in a little circle around the tower to see what was behind it, and pointed at my bridge. "What's up there?"

The others moved over to look, and I joined them just to see things from the same perspective they did.

"Like I said, I intend to reinforce things," I began. "So I thought I'd run supports into the plateau every ten stories or so. It may not be enough, but it has to help."

"But you also dug into the cliff," said Jessica, and I nodded, though they weren't looking at me.

"A little. I like the idea of a room outside the tower you can only access from the tower. Or, I guess, by flying." I gestured at the cliff face. "That's part of why I made the cliff so sheer. It looked more like the rest, before."

The others nodded, and then John spoke. "Can we just go up to the top? From what you said most of the floors are empty, right?"

I sighed, and picked everyone up with the Bracers. It made everyone momentarily nervous, and Jessica decided to teleport herself instead, but I brought the rest of us up only seconds behind her.

I hadn't spent a whole lot of time taking in the view, but I could admit it was nice. With the way I was positioned from the plateau, you couldn't see the town, but the view of the hills and mountains was... I guess I could admit it was breathtaking. It's easy to think of hills as just hills, mountains as just mountains, but when you look at them from the right angle, they're rolling contours onto which a complex painting is stretched, rocks and bushes, and some scattered trees, all finding a way to live in a world that was anything but even and predictable.

Everyone was quiet for a minute, though when I looked around, Steve seemed largely unimpressed by the view. I could chalk that up to him being kind of an ass, but he was the Hero of the Golden Armory, and he was intended for a lot more up-close action and a lot less talking and standing around. John, in contrast, had his eyes on the horizon, drinking in sights that were probably well beyond my ability to see. The Hero of the Phantom Arrow could probably have put a hole in anything I could see well enough to describe to him--or possibly a hundred arrows in the shape of a smiley face. I had to assume the non-magical heroes were as overpowered as I was, just each in their own way.

Alice had her eyes closed, enjoying the breeze, and Jessica was studying the plateau itself. I let them, finding my thoughts drifting to the task of building up the tower some more. Should I have more supports? Did I need to make the supports of a different material? I wasn't sure that the raw carbon I had was ideal for these purposes. What if I made the cliff a single piece as well?

"This is great and all," Steve finally said, "but I'd like to sit down, and hopefully get something to eat."

"Right," I said. "Let me show you the rooms, first of all."

We went down the stairs, me pointing out the little work I'd done before we got to the first of the two levels with guest rooms. "This and the next floor down each have two rooms apiece," I said. "I don't have mattresses, because I'm not sure what to fill them with--"

"Oh, I can help with that," said Jess, reaching into her own holding-ish bag and pulling out a pair of over-ear headphones. "I think the cups on this are memory foam."

I barely had to touch the headphones to Fabricate a sample of the rubbery foam inside, examining it. I wasn't convinced that it was perfect, but it would do very well for mattresses and cushions. I nodded. "This will help," I said. "I could also use some good steel--"

"Oh, right," John reached into his own bag and pulled out a pair of glasses. "You might like these."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "The Hero--"

"Yeah, yeah," the archer snapped back at me. "Great eyesight was my wish and I got it. It's not that surprising."

I nodded and took it, not really sure what the frames were made out of. "So it's--"

"They're the kind of frames you can wrap around your finger," John said. "Some kind of memory metal."

That did get my attention, and with a moment of concentration, I generated a chunk of metal that was equivalent to the glasses frame. While I didn't have an immediate use--no, that wasn't right, I'd probably do something for armor with it. It seemed too exotic for common purposes, though.

"We also have a few different types of plastic, not just credit cards," said Alice, though I noticed she didn't have a bag of her own. I doubted that the bags had any weight; was she not carrying one because of some kind of class restriction?

"And three cell phones," said Jessica, with a grimace. "For what good they do us in a world without cell towers or wifi."

Only three? Even assuming mine had been stolen or destroyed by the Vizier, that left at least one person who didn't have one on them when they were wished away. Or maybe something else happened? I didn't care enough to ask, but I was curious.

"Okay," I said, shrugging. "We don't have to get to all of that just now. But if Steve wants to sit down--"

"Honestly," he took the bag off his belt and threw it in one of the rooms, "Right now I want food."

We looked around between us, and I shrugged.

"Okay," I said, "let's go to the tavern then."

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