Work on my grove went well, the lake filled up and burst its banks, heading further down the gentle slope of the valley towards the far side, where it spilled over the edge and down into the mists.
As for regrowing the grass that the storm had wiped out, I took inspiration from my previous communion with grasskind. It was fairly easy to create a low level spell that would essentially do the sa thing but without forcing the poor plants into unwelco sentience. I’d be able to track the whereabouts and basic information of anyone standing on my massive lawn with it. Pretty cool, if I did say so myself.
The Order’s village was also well on its way to becoming a real thing. Unlike with my inner sanctum, we were going with stone and wood for the construction, so the place was going to look like a proper dieval village. Well, apart from all the magic that would be everywhere.
Mining the stone was actually kinda hilarious in a multitude of different ways. First off, I went out into the mundane world and wandered around until I found a nice exposed cliff face. Then I began to slice it up with magic blades.
This produced a small crowd of gawking Avonsiders, who watched from what they probably thought was a safe distance. That is, until one brave dude made his way over to with so of his friends in tow.
“Why are you, um… cutting the cliff up?” he asked tentatively.
“Hmm?” I turned, pausing in my vivisection of the mountain to see who had interrupted . “I’m cutting up stone for the new Order of Eleos base.”
He blinked, and behind him his friends passed looks amongst themselves. “Can’t you like, grow buildings and shit out of thin air?”
“Yeah, but as much as I like it, I don’t think living inside a giant tree is for everyone,” I explained calmly, feeling like I had a chance to be nice here, get on their good side. “Well, the Order decided it anyway, so here I am.”
“Where’s the uh… the base going to be?” he asked curiously, seeming to settle into the conversation.
“Inside my grove,” I smiled, then went on to explain further. “Magic users on this big ring-world co in a bunch of different shapes and forms. I’m a mage, which is a little bit of a misnor as we understand it, but that’s besides the point. Every mage has their own little… pocket dinsion, you could say, which is called a grove. We’re building the village in there so it’s safe from all the bullshit in the outside world.”
“That’s so cool,” one of the girls in the group blurted, staring at with open wonder.
“Must be nice,” another grumbled, clearly not sharing her friend’s assessnt of . “You get to boss everyone around and you have your own safe place to hang out in if things get too rough.”
“I an… I guess,” I shrugged, unsure what to make of her tone. “There is the fact that there’s a power hungry creeper who wants dead, out in the wider world. Wants all of us dead, actually.”
That threw her off guard. “What, why?”
“A whole bunch of reasons, but it really just boils down to the fact that he likes being in power and we’re a threat to him,” I shrugged, turning back to my work.
“Well then stop being a threat to him,” she hissed, taking a step towards my back. “You just chased off a whole shit ton of our guards, now you’re saying so guy wants us dead? Who even is this guy? Does the faculty know?”
“Yo Rhea, what the heck is your problem right now?” the friendly girl demanded, stepping between the two of us.
Well, guess I wasn’t getting any more stone cutting done until they stopped being annoying.
“I’d like to know that too, actually,” I stated, crossing my arms and levelling a glare at her. Funny how this sort of thing would have terrified before. Almost a year later though and I had power beyond anything this lot could hope to get their hands on, and it gave a certain degree of confidence.
“Why the hell did you get magic anyway?” the angry girl nad Rhea asked, almost sneering past her friend at .
“Pure accident,” I smiled, then tilted my head in thought. “Wait no, there was so stupidity involved too actually, on my part.”
Her answer was a simple stare of confused disbelief — a whole host of emotions trampling across her face as she obviously tried to think of what to be angry about next. Evidently she didn’t co up with anything, because she turned on her heel and stomped off in a huff.
“Damn, what was that about?” I asked, motioning to the enraged girl with a hand.
“Honestly, I have no damned idea,” the guy who’d originally approached said, scratching at the back of his neck in confusion. “She’s normally pretty chill. Unless it’s about n being dumb or sothing, then she gets sorta… obnoxiously feminist.”
“He’s right,” the girl agreed with a wince. “Like, I’m all for girl power and shit, but she goes about it so weird…”
My eyebrow twitched with sudden suspicion, but I didn’t say anything outright. Instead, I began with sothing simple I needed to establish first. “So, did you know I used to be a student here?” I asked, pretending to change the subject.
“Yeah, I heard you were a guy, too?” the girl asked, her words setting on edge until her curious expression registered.
“Sothing like that, yeah,” I smiled awkwardly. Explaining the fact that inside my head, I’d never been a man was frustrating — especially when it ca to cis people. Sex and gender were so closely intertwined in most people’s heads that it just wasn’t worth my individual effort to untangle them.
“What’s that like?” the guy asked curiously. “I always said if I got turned into a girl for a day, I’d just—“
One of the other guys, silent until now, laughed and punched his friend in the shoulder. “Co on dude! Not in the company of the ladies!”
“What, like we don’t all know what he was going to say?” the girl asked, hands now very firmly planted on hips.
“She’s not wrong,” yet another guy piped up with a guffaw. “You’re horny as fuck.”
“Okay, okay,” the first dude laughed good naturedly, putting his hands up in defeat. “It'd be fun though, right? I'd get first hand experience for the bext ti—”
The girl winced and glanced briefly in my direction. “Guys, co on. Just because you're—”
“I didn’t! I didn't do that — do anything, and then…” I interrupted, feeling a little shy and overwheld. “I uh… I got a girlfriend. So… yeah.”
“Nice!” original dude grinned, offering a high five before wimping out when he realised who he was offering it too. Guess I was still a little intimidating.
Guess I should end things here for now, before it got any weirder. Too many guys here, and yeah they obviously weren't shit people, but they were just a little too on the pervy side for my taste.
“Well, I’ve got to get back to cutting this cliff up, but if you stick around you’ll see sothing pretty great,” I told them all with what I hoped was a mysterious wink.
The surprise greatness turned out to be my buns. I transported a whole cohort of them out into the mundane world to help with stacking the newly carved stone. I had them sort each segnt by how intact it was, since stonecutting was an artform all on its own, and I had no idea what I was doing. I’d get the buildy people to co out and sort through it all later.
Rhea the grump ca back with another girl, both of which stood off to the side and glared at , occasionally exchanging a whisper or two. I had suspicions about what her problem with was, and if I was correct… well, it would be incredibly fucking draining.
On the bright side, I was ambushed by a certain newly acquired sister as I delivered the stone to a stockpile within the grove.
“Ryn! Ryn!” she exclaid, bounding down the slope towards . “There you are, I had a breakthrough!”
Goodness, Kit was so adorable, with her huge shirt, short shorts and bare feet spinning dirt in all directions.
“On which of your projects?” I asked with an intrigued smile. Kit had been off doing her own thing with Esra for a while now, basically research and developnt into a bunch of different spells we’d need.
“Well, two actually, but they’re linked,” she said, bopping up and down on the spot for a mont before going still to explain. “So, we got power working obviously — creating energy is actually infinitely easier than we’d thought. You can convert magic to electricity in the sa way we do it now — except the rotational work is done by magic. I an, it's pretty basic shit, when you stop trying to finesse it with so sort of magical currency converter.”
“And the wireless network?” I asked hopefully, suddenly finding myself very excited indeed. If there was one thing I still missed from my old life, it was a connection to the internet. We might not have anything as vast as we used to, but the university network was better than nothing. I bet they already had so sort of new social dia app. I was so keen to get my eyes on the gossip that people were spinning there.
“Harder… for now we’re going to have to pilfer a router from sowhere on campus,” she winced, giving an apologetic look. “We have figured out how to transfer information from the mundane world to the Naless Garden though! A little plant we designed can do it. It’s so cute actually, it’s basically a flower where the stalk ends in an ethernet plug.”
“Wait, really?” I asked as my eyebrows rose with surprised interest. “How on earth does it get the information between realms?”
“I honestly don’t understand it yet,” Kit told sheepishly, one hand scrunching itself in the too-big T-shirt she wore. “Esra’s been researching this stuff for years and it’s all way beyond . I mainly helped with the magic to tech interfacing.”
“Still, that’s helpful,” I comnded her with a gentle pat on the shoulder. “When can we have it up and running?”
Cheeky little brown eyes widened with impending mischief. “As soon as we can steal a router and find a sneaky place to plug our flower in.”
Oh dear. Since when had quiet, shy little Kit gotten so subtly naughty? Was I a bad influence on her?
“Well… we could go snooping right now…” I suggested, giving her a sly look.
“That’s what I was thinking!” she nodded, but her vigor fell away into uncertainty as she murmured, “I did want to ask you though…”
“Ask what?”
The stare I got was full of anxiety and hope, and she mumbled her next words out in a rush. “What do you think of… of the na Catherine?”
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