Chapter 1
In a dark tent on a grassing plain stands a human in his late forties or early fifties looking over the maps laid out before him. Clean shaved with a crop of short salt and pepper hair he is wearing a set of light plate armor with a lion head crest on the chest plate. A field table takes up the center of the room with lanterns casting light across the surface. Looking over the missives and reports laying there he grunts with obvious frustration, pounds the table with a fist and looks up. A moment later a much younger man enters through the tent flap to the left. Snapping to attention the younger man speaks. “Sir! There is still nothing from the company we sent into the forest. The scouts just returned and they found the bridge that was set up to cross the river destroyed. They didn’t find anything else.”
“Two weeks!’’ The older man shouts. “They are two weeks past due and we have nothing!” The older man goes quiet as he calms down. A minute later when his face is passive he starts talking to his subordinate again. “Send the scouts that didn’t go to the village to look around. They are to observe but not engage.” The younger man with the same lion crest on his chest stands a little taller and says “Yes Commander.” Then he about faces and walks out of the command tend to give the orders.
The Commander takes a seat in a wooden fold out chair and starts looking over a map when a shadow passes over him from someone entering the tent again. “Is that the map the returned scout marked?” The newcomer asks. Looking up from the table the commander responds. “Greetings major. Indeed it is. I am still unable to get to the bottom of this. Brock was not that smartest captain we had but he wasn’t stupid. With the surprise attack he should have been able to make it back out of that damn forest even if the forces in the village were more than we expected. But there is no sign of them now.” He meets the new guest’s blue eyes with his slate gray ones. “What do you think happened to Major Brown?”
“I don’t know Commander Ruskin, but at this point I think we need to assume they are lost to a man.” A face that some may call hansom made roguish by the diagonal scar on his left cheek takes on a contemplative look. “We scout, and then send a bigger force. And maybe send one of the mages as well. If this village was able to take out our company then they may be trouble in the future.” He then focuses his eyes on his commander once again.
“Yes. That is what I was thinking as well. I know you don’t like these types of missions either, slaving missions are for slavers not soldiers. I will need you to lead this force though. Your main objective is not to take slaves this time. You will determine the threat here and eliminate it if possible. If not possible then it is up to you what action you take, but we need the information you collect. That is your top priority. I will give you two companies of seasoned soldiers. What mage will you take? How about Morren?”
“The magma mage? No. Within the forest he may start a fire that hurts our own people. Is that earth mage still here?” The commander looks down to the table and picks up one of the papers scattered across it. “No. He was sent to another unit in one of the outlying villages for some reason.” Major Brown just shakes his head. Clearly he was not happy with his choices. “I guess that leaves The Frozen Shadow. Varl gives me a bad feeling, but there is no one else.” The commander nods his agreement. “Varl is a good soldier, if a little strange. He will serve you well in the forest and his control of his magic is exceptional.”
“When should we leave sir?”
“When the scouts return in a few days with the information they scout from the village.” With a sigh he continues to speak. “I will tell Varl for you. Just make sure he comes back. There aren’t enough mages already and we don’t need one to disappear in the forest for some dumb slaving mission gone wrong.” With a firm nod to his commander, Major Brown turns and leaves the tent. As he leaves the commander sighs again “I hate a lack of information.” Then he goes back to reading his reports.
*******
It has been a month since we arrived here at our new home. We have made amazing progress with the village and the defensive wall. I have been spending the first half of my day raising the wall and using all the stored mana from the village itself to do it. With the extra mana I have been able to do twice as much as I would have otherwise. The wall is 15 feet thick and 30 feet tall with enclosed shelters every 100 feet for guards to use during bad weather. There is also a full tower able to house guards on each side of the gates that we created to the South, East and North. These are at the wall where the three main roads coming from the keep meet it. I also created the docks I mentioned early on. I should be able to finish the wall tomorrow if there aren’t any more delays. The last part of the wall to go up is the section in front of the lake that will connect the whole wall to the cliff face. It has been slower going near the river and then even slower near the lake because I had to reinforce the foundation of the wall to prevent the water from damaging it.
I had just finished with the work on the wall for the day and was headed back to the keep with Bolden and his son. “I will be glad to finish that wall tomorrow and get back to enchanting and tinkering” Bolden tells me as we walk.
I turn to him and his son to look at them for a moment. “I have been curious as to what you can make. Considering my…” I look over to Bolden’s son before I continue “unique background, I may have some interesting ideas for you.”
Bolden’s face lights up at the prospect, and I can even see some interest in his son’s face. I don’t think he knows that I came from a whole different world so I don’t expect him to fully understand. “That would be great Vol! Come by my shop sometime and I will show you what we have been able to do and what we are working on.” After a moment of deep thought Bolden turns to me again and asks question. “I would like to talk to you sometime about where you are from. Just that may be able to give me some ideas for the future.”
“Of course” I tell him. I’ve gotten to know him a little better with our work on the construction over the last month and I can see why Azzaria trusts him. “Hopefully there will be a lot more time for that kind of thing when we’re finished. I still want to create some extra houses after we finish with the ones we need for residents. Just for future use. That can be done at a much more leisurely rate though.” I decide to bring up what I was thinking of the past few days now to see what he thinks. “Bolden, there is a lot of extra room between all the buildings we have made and the wall to the south and north. I was thinking about what we should do with the land.”
This gets a curious look from him so I continue. “To the south I want to level out the land and see if we can get some of the people who showed interest in farming to set up a few fields there. My hope is that we can plant a few things that would be fast growing and hearty enough to be helpful in sustaining the population were there a siege. Maybe an orchard with a variety of fruit bearing trees in part of it. And maybe corn and some kind of potato would be good for the other fields.”
“That sounds great Vol. We were planning on having those crops anyways so having some of them here inside the wall won’t be an issue. Enora may even help you to get the orchard started so that we don’t have to wait for a couple years to get the trees to grow to fruit bearing size. What do you want to do with the northern area?”
“Hold on Bolden. What do you mean Enora can help with the Orchard?”
He turns to me a little surprised. “You didn’t know? Well, Enora is a mage too. She has a high level in Life magic too, with spells like Grow that could speed up the growth of the trees you want to plant.”
Surprised at the revelation of Enora being a mage I don’t respond for a moment. The way she handled those soldiers back in Efftin showed me she wasn’t a push over, but I didn’t really see what she did. Then I start thinking. She is an alchemist so being a Life mage probably has some synergistic benefits, much like my class and profession. “Do you have a spell book for the grow spell that Azzaria could use? She would be able to help Enora with the trees and even the
first crops that we plant to give us a good start.”
He is shaking his head even before I finish. “I don’t have that spell book. Enora may be able to teach her though. Her Life magic may be high enough for that, and before you ask, you have to be at least level 50 in a magic type to teach anything from that type to others.” He obviously noticed a look from me at his first statement and answered my question without asking.
“I didn’t know you could do that. Ok, I’ll talk to both Enora and Azzaria and see if we can get that worked out. To answer your question from before I sidetracked us, I want to turn the open area to the north into a training area. You may have known that I have been casting my spells at the cliff face up there to train in the afternoon. I want to set up lanes for casters and other ranged fighters, using the cliff face as a backdrop for safety. The rest of the area I was thinking we could build a training building to store equipment and some areas for sparring and weapons practice.”
Bolden is nodding along with me but speaks up again when I stop talking. “That’s great, but it will only take up a half of that area at most. What about the rest of it?” I hadn’t really thought of it much before so I told him as much.
After another minute of walking, it’s his son that speaks up. “What about entertainment?” Beccer says. “We have the inns and we can go there to drink and talk to others, but there isn’t really anything for people to do other than train, work or drink. It was the same back in Efftin before we left.”
Then it hits me “An arts district!” The idea came so suddenly that I actually blurted it out a little loudly, startling the two walking with me. “We can make an art hall for people to display things they make and maybe even sell some of them. A museum might even be called for later, also a theater. We can make it so that most of it is below ground so that we can make it an amphitheater and still only one story high.”
After the initial startle that I gave them with my outburst they start nodding along. They are visibly excited about the prospect. At this point we are approaching the wall we created for the keeps entrance. “That sounds like a great idea. I will bring it up to the others if I see them. I’ll see you later out where we stopped on the houses yesterday” Bolden tells me. Then he and his son head off to Beccer’s house while I head through the gate, which still doesn’t have a way to close it, into the keep. Bolden and his wife opted to stay in the suites they were given when we first moved in, but Beccer and his family decided to have their own place made. That is where they usually head off to for lunch.
Walking up the stairs of the keep I get to the main hall. It’s been getting more and more empty as we make places for people to live. The families that were staying in the cramped quarters downstairs were the first to be moved as we built the bigger multistoried houses first and worked our way out. Now that there are only a couple of people without houses, and we plan to build those this afternoon, there is only Azzaria and I in the hall. The council members all usually eat at the shops for lunch. “Hey babe” I call out to her when I see her seated at the table in the hall. ”I was talking to Bolden on the way here and there are a few things we thought of to do with the areas inside the wall that are unused.”
Over lunch I tell Azzaria about the plans we discussed. When we finished eating she had a few things to say. “Starting an orchard is a good idea but it will take years to produce anything. Also, there isn’t enough time in the season to grow potatoes or corn.”
I give her a bright smile and then ask “You have been practicing your life magic right?” When she gives me a confused nod I continue. “Bolden had a solution for that. He said that Enora is a mage, specifically having Life magic. I think you should pay her a visit later while I am working on the houses and see if she can teach you a few things. If you tell her what we want to do maybe she can teach you the Grow spell to help out.”
“I didn’t know Enora was that experienced that she could teach others Life magic, but I only recently unlocked it and I don’t think anyone else in the village has it. Alright, I’ll talk to her. I’ll ask the other council members to make sure they don’t have any objections either. Maybe Enora and I can get started on the orchard today.”
Finished eating, I get up and give Azzaria a hug from behind. “Thanks. That would be great if you could get started today. I’ll leave the choice of what trees to plant up to you and Enora. I would like it to be against the cliff face to the south of the village. The houses we are working on are around there so maybe I will see you there.” She gets up and we walk out of the keep going our separate ways. She heads across the square that has been built in front of the keep and towards Enora’s shop as I go south. A few minutes later I meet up with Bolden and Beccer again to start on the houses.
When we first started this I showed the two enchanters what I was thinking about for houses and they had liked it. The first houses as well as the inns that we built were three above ground stories and a basement. The ones we are building today are two stories and a basement. I start by clearing out a hole about ten feet deep and forty feet across on each side. Thankfully that is deep enough to be on solid bedrock so the foundation doesn’t need any more work. Then I create a staircase in the back right corner of the plot. I raise four thick, evenly spaced columns of stone up in the basement and stone walls to hold back the dirt and soil. Last, for the basement, is a thick slab of stone that I move over it at ground level. I removed a rectangle of stone from the floor where the staircase I raised with the walls is.
I have a little mana left so I pull up more stone and make a few interior walls before I’m too low to continue. On the bottom floor will be a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and laundry room. On the top floor is a master bedroom with an attached bathroom, three regular bedrooms and another bathroom. All topped by a gently slanted roof to either side that rain will roll off. As I continue to build it gets a little harder and more mana intensive to raise the stone. I have to use the earth around me to lift the stone slabs I have formed. When I get them in place I fuse them together. Last is a small five foot privacy fence that separates all the houses and the small backyards they have.
When all is done it takes over an hour for us each to create a house with the breaks to replenish our mana. Doors and windows are something that the few carpenters and glassmakers we have are churning out as fast as possible. With us only building half of the day they have been able to keep up with the demand, barely. When the three of us finish our houses we take a break to replenish mana again and the rest of the workers get to the business of attaching doors and installing windows. Waiting to start the second house I see Azzaria and Enora approaching. They wave to me but keep moving toward the south. Looks like they are off to start the orchard I was hoping for.
Mana topped off again, we move on to the next set of houses. After doing 9 buildings total between the three of us we go back to the first set of houses where the new residents are already moving in. We install their enchantments for them using the stones they brought with them from Efftin. A few people had to pay for the needed mana stones because their old home didn’t have as many bathrooms, but they didn’t seem to mind. While doing this we take care of creating the plumbing. I never wanted to know so much about magical septic systems, but Bolden taught me so that I could help. Plus, it gave me some time to meet most of the residents of my land while I worked.
During the construction of my second building I got a message telling me that my Earth magic has reached level fifteen and another that Advanced Mana Control reached level nine. Over that last month my earth magic level has soared with all the use of Shape Earth, though it is slowing down some. It is to be expected since I’m just using the same spell over and over again. In the afternoon I’ve been training my other magic types and I have been able to bring them all to level ten now, except for Space. Space spells are mana intensive and I’ve been able to grind it up to level eight so far. With all the enchanting work for the new homes I was also able to get Enchanting to level thir
teen. As the last families are moving in and we are installing their enchantments my message icon lights up. It’s a pleasant surprise that greets me.
Congratulations! For overall number of buildings constructed your village has reached level 10. You are awarded 1 DP. This can be used from the land development menu.
Congratulations! For reaching level 10 as a village and having a population over 300 your Village is upgraded to a Town. New options are unlocked in the land development menu. You are awarded 1 DP. This can be used from the land development menu.
During the last month of construction I spent 2 more of the DP the village earned to buy the next upgrade of the village’s mana capacity. That brought the overall mana the village could store and regenerate per day to 40,000. Other than that I have been saving the points for when I wasn’t so busy and could look through the options. I’ll have to take some time tomorrow after the wall is finished to look through what can be done. With eight available DP and our new status as a Town I’m hopeful to have a few good options to invest in.
A Mage Rising: (The Chronicles of Herst 2: A LitRPG Saga) Page 3
