SS - Chapter 18 - Renovations

“I thought you said you wanted to wait a couple days before heading back to the citadel,” Camille said as we made our way through the forest, down the now well trodden path.

“That’s true, but that was before I realized I didn’t take a good look at the surrounding terrain the last time we were there. I was too busy focusing on the enemy to get the lay of the land. If we’re going to use the area as a base of operations I want to know what I’m dealing with,” I replied.

“Alright… and why is she here?” Camille asked, throwing a thumb over her shoulder.

“I’m right here, you could just ask,” Selena scowled. 

I shrugged. “She worked as a mercenary, which is why she knows her way around a weapon and she wanted to help, so I thought I’d bring her along.” 

Now that she’d had a couple nights to rest, and clean off the grime, Selena seemed to glide across the ground. She’d obviously had combat training based upon our experience in the citadel, and she’d almost worked as a scout or hunter based upon how light her steps were. 

I’d given her a set of leather armor, and let her keep the halberd she’d salvaged, so now she didn’t act like a professional fighter, she looked like one.

“You thought you’d bring her along?” Camille repeated, eyes narrowing. “You hate bringing extra people out on patrol, or inspection, you’ve told me repeatedly that they slow you down. The only reason you tolerate my presence is I’m faster than you, and your mother forced you to take me everywhere ever since you were a kid.”

“You’re not faster than me,” I grumbled.

“So you’re not denying that you would have left me behind if your mother hadn’t forced you to take me everywhere?” Camille gasped in mock horror.

“I’m going to start leaving you behind if you keep doddeling like this,” I hissed at the girl. “Come on, we’re almost there.”

“Fine,” Camille pouted. She sped up passing me and jogging down the path. We were practically at our destination so she burst out of the woods first, and immediately skid to a halt.

“What’s going on?” Selena asked. “Is there more trouble out there?”

“Not trouble, no…” Camille muttered. “How long did your system say it would take to assemble the citadel?”

“Two weeks,” I replied as I broke into a light jog. That was a leading question if I’d ever heard one.

I emerged out of the woods on the same rise that we’d spotted the Skylians on, and looked at the changes below, dumbfounded. 

The canyon where the elf bloods had taken cover, and in which we’d found the entrance to the citadel, was gone. In its place was a large hill topped by a single tower made of the white citadel stone. 

As we watched the tower pulsed, emitting a wave of magic. The earth seemed to roll off the surrounding hills, and slide down to the valley floor. It appeared that the stone was very slowly terraforming the surrounding area.

It sort of made sense, a valley created in the lowest part of a valley would be extremely vulnerable to siege warfare, but I never imagined that it could do something of this scale.

The stone had already managed to raise the valley floor, and I could imagine that after a week it would invert the terrain. All the surrounding hills would be leveled, and the citadel would be left on the largest rise in the area.

I felt a rumble in the ground under my feet right before the ground dropped a couple inches, the earth under our very feet stolen away to feed the massive project.

“Can you imagine how much magic the stone must be using right now? It would take workers years to complete a project of this size, and it’s going to be finished in just a couple weeks,” Selena muttered in awe.

“I was hoping that we could find a plateau overlooking the area to build on in the future,” I mumbled, “but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be a problem. The stone is leveling a massive area.”

“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” Camille asked. 

“I… don’t know,” I admitted. “If it’s like Iskel there’ll be a main fortress, along with a castle town, surrounded by an outer wall. The problem is I don’t know how much of that structure was created by the citadel, and how much was built around the structure afterwards.”

Leaning closer to the edge of the ravine, being careful to watch my footing just in case the citadel decided to steal the earth from beneath my feet again, I tried to estimate exactly how far the terraforming project stretched.

“It looks like this entire area is getting flattened, so there'll be extra room for us to work with, even if the citadel is massive. The far side of the ravine is even closer to the town, so this might work out well for us,” I explained. As soon as I felt the ground shudder again I stepped back from the edge and glanced over at my companions. “Although this trip was informative, I don’t think there’s anything else we can do here until the construction finishes.”

“We should make sure to let people know to stay away from the area until everything is finished,” Selena suggested. “There might only be minor tremors now, but who knows what’ll happen later. If the stone starts uprooting trees, someone could get hurt.”

“I’ll make the announcement when we get back,” I agreed.

Camille bounced back from the edge of the ravine, then glanced between Selena and myself. “So… back to town?”

“Unless either of you has another suggestion,” I said.

“Actually, I do,” Selena announced. Camille looked at her suspiciously, but didn’t interrupt. “I noticed you were filling in the local maps when the Elder and I came to visit yesterday, is there anything around here we can check out?”

Camille and I exchanged a glance. 

“I wrote it all down, but I didn’t really take note of what was around the citadel,” Camille admitted. “So it wouldn’t hurt to check out what’s around here.”

“System,” I mumbled under my breath. When the window appeared I changed it to the map tab and turned it so everyone could see it.

Selena’s hand hovered over the screen, her eyes going wide. “How did you get this much information?”

“It was another of the stone’s abilities,” I explained. “See anything worth investigating?”

Camille tilted her head, her eyes unfocused. That wasn’t surprising since we spent the better part of the afternoon staring at maps yesterday.  

Selena, on the other hand, immediately stabbed a finger at the screen. “Can you move the map slightly to the west?”

“Sure? Why?” I asked as I gently scrolled the map.

“Because, there’s a dungeon on here,” she replied quietly.

“What?!? No there isn’t,” Camille shouted, focus returning to her eyes as she leaned forwards. “I spent hours copying the resources over, I didn’t see anything like that.”

“Right here,” Selena gestured to a tiny grey mark on the far side citadel. “You see that symbol? That’s the same mark that mercenaries and adventurers use to mark dungeons.”

“Are you sure?” Camille asked suspiciously. “It wasn’t in the resource index, and we chose this area specifically because it didn’t have monsters.”

“I’m telling you, that’s the exact mark we used for dungeons,” Selena growled.

“Enough!” I snapped, stepping between the two of them. “It’s not worth arguing about, especially when I can check what it is.”

Tapping the small icon brought up a sub window.

Alpine Forest Dungeon 

Rank: Mature

Status: Disabled (Insufficient Ambient Magic)

Empower Dungeon? (Requires 10 magic) [Enable/Disable]

“You can just disable dungeons? What? Why? How?” Camille hollered. 

“I have no idea. Both stones and dungeons take magic out of the area, and use them to perform functions, so maybe the stone is just more efficient at it, pulling the magic away from the local dungeons?” I suggested.

“That would definitely explain why the area was so devoid of monsters,” Selena muttered. “We should probably keep this information to ourselves for now though.”

“Why? You don’t trust our friends? The people we trust our lives with?” Camille spouted.

“No… it’s more that if that information gets out, it’ll almost certainly kick off another wave of stone seekers, disrupting the local kingdoms,” Selena grumbled. “And when that happens the kingdoms will start looking for the source of the rumors, and that could draw their eyes here.” 

“We have next to no communication with the outside world, so the chances of that happening are next to nothing,” I said. “But you have a valid point. We’ll keep it to ourselves, for now.”

“Do we go check it out?” Camille asked excitedly.

I considered for a few seconds, then shook my head. “There’s no rush if it’s disabled. From what I can tell it’s another hour out, and that’s a long way to go to see an empty hole. There might be a core there, but it’s not going anywhere. We’ll deal with it when there’s more time.”

“Alright… Later,” Camille pouted. She stared at her shoes for about three seconds before bouncing up and shoving her finger against my window. “In that case I recommend we go by the herb field. It’s never a bad idea to stock up on meds, and I’d love to run through an open field for once, instead of trudging through these forests.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at her hijinx. “Fine, it’s not that far away, and we really should check out these resource nodes.”

“Hooray!” Camille cheered, skipping off in the general direction of the field.

“Yes, hooray,” Selena repeated, in a completely uninterested tone.

I just laughed at the pair. Even though they got along as well as oil and water it felt good to get out with them. Stretch my legs, and clear my mind. There was still a lot to do, but at least I had people to help me.