The swarm of activity around Meil had mostly moved inside. The outskirts of the city, places outside the walls, had been stripped bare save for a fairly impressive stockpile that was meant to be moved into the Adamant Fortress once Iniri deployed it. The Artifact might be nigh-impenetrable but it didn’t come with infinite food or water or built-in toilets.

The last of the refugees were being swept inside the walls, and the Classers who were intending to stay inside the Fortress and fight were milling about near the stockpile. Some of them were clearly meditating, others using various Skills to make a temporary encampment. Plants were twisted into shades and cushions, dirt and stone was shaped into tables and chairs, and really it looked like they were enjoying themselves.

Iniri made some sort of speech about the move, and what people should expect before giving me the signal that everything was ready. It was a good thing she prepared them too, because even I was impressed by how ominous the giant black dome of the city-sized [Relocate] looked. Iniri’s silver light flecks kept the streets and houses illuminated though, as people settled in to wait it out. Even with my enormous mana reserves I couldn’t make such a huge transfer happen instantly.

It was just as well, because it was fascinating to watch the mana build up. It had something in common with the teleport as well as well as [Spatial Overlay], that weird Field that overlapped different areas, but with extra flourishes. The flourishes were probably to keep the teleport from ripping giant chunks of me out during the transfer, since [Relocate] somehow managed to move pieces of me without disconnecting them in the process.

Once it started, I didn’t really need to pay much attention to it, which was fine because I had other things to do. Most notably, I needed to get together with the resident dragon about how to properly make Bargains. While this particular one was probably not that dangerous, I’d rather make sure I knew what I was doing now rather than later. Besides, Ansae had kept her word and left the core necklace off for the duration.

I had a choice whether or not to trust Ansae. She’d done both things to confirm and betray trust in the past, and I could go into the future with either attitude. To not trust was easy, and in some ways the safest choice, because she could do so much damage if she wanted to. But if I did trust her, I could get so much out of it, provided I had the courage.

So I decided to trust. Partly because I didn’t think of myself as a coward, and partly because even if it annoyed me I knew what she had done was necessary. I was far better off knowing exactly what her motivations and actions were than sulking against a slight that was, in the grand scheme of things, not particularly important.

I’d been practicing my focus by talking at Shayma while focusing elsewhere and seeing if she didn’t hear it. While I wouldn’t call my precision great, I could at least get to about fifty meters away before she started hearing anything, whereas before it had been, well, wherever. It was a start.

Shayma was still a little touchy where the topic of Ansae was concerned, but not as upset as a couple days ago. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the talk she’d had with Iniri and her parents, or just the passage of time. Either way she didn’t argue at all and grumbled very little when I asked her to pay a visit.

Ansae stretched and yawned when Shayma teleported in, lazing in full dragon form. Rolling to her feet, she peered down at Shayma as she flexed her wings and settled them against her back.

“Yee-eess?” She drawled, looking down at my fox-girl.

“Blue wants to talk to you,” she replied, waving in the direction of the necklace where it rested on a pedestal among other pieces of her hoard. Ansae grinned and snatched it up, settling it around her neck.

“What can I do for you?”

“Hi Ansae. I guess you’re out of the doghouse since I need a bunch of advice.”

“Of course you do.” She chuckled and curled her tail about her forepaws, looking smug. “I’ve noticed a lot of activity in the past few days.” That was news to me since so far as I could tell she’d been mostly asleep the past few days, but since this was Ansae there was no reason she couldn’t pay attention while asleep.

“Yeah we’ve got an army bearing down on Meil and stuff, but actually I have a question about Bargains. I want to make one to bind a bunch of people in but I’m not sure how to go about it.”

“It’s Anton’s Village,” Shayma added. “They want to stay but Blue wants to make sure they’re his.”

“Indeed? Are they all pledging individually or through a representative?”

“Well, their council of elders decided.”

“Plus one of the elders wants to become a Companion,” Shayma added. “If that affects anything.”

“I imagine that’s only to the better, but Companions are completely new to my experience so I can only guess.” Ansae’s tailtip flicked as she considered it. “It doesn’t matter that much, but I’d say having the elders commit is better. Binding yourself to individual mortals is just asking for trouble.”

“I’m going to provide them with land and protection in exchange for absolute authority. I kind of need some way to interact with the rest of the world other than having Shayma do everything.”

“Mmm.” Ansae hummed thoughtfully. “Normally I would advise against using a Bargain for that, since mortals are eager enough to serve the powerful, but yours is a special case. Your land is you, so simply playing landlord and letting them sort their own issues won’t work.”

“Yeah basically my thoughts. My problem is I don’t know how to make a Bargain happen. With Shayma it just kinda did, and it wasn’t concluded until I got her into a breeding station and that’s not going to work for this.”

“I would think not. That first time, you could not speak with anyone?”

“No, I couldn’t hear him until after. The most I got was a sensation of being watched,” Shayma told her.

“I suspect that is why. It should be that all you need do is state it and will it. There is no special magic, no Skill to invoke. It is simply what you are.”

“I sure hope stating it through Shayma counts. I feel it ought to, since she’s kinda-sorta part of me?”

“I would think so. It’s a unique situation, even among Powers who are, themselves, unique.”

“I’m going to be awfully embarrassed if it doesn’t work. Also this Bargain is a sort of in-perpetuity thing rather than the one-time deal I got with Shayma. How does that affect how it works?”

“Nothing lasts forever, so no Bargain will either.” Ansae shook her massive head. “A Bargain that cannot be concluded, only broken, is no Bargain at all. Give them three or five or seven generations. When that future comes, there may be better options.”

“Okay that makes sense. So do you have any idea what the Bargain will actually do, considering?”

“It’s different for every Bargain, every Power.” Ansae frowned. “It will let you enforce your conditions, but in what form and manner remains to be seen.”

“It seems very vague to me,” Shayma remarked.

“Yeah, but Power stuff seems purposely more free-form than the structured Classes and Skills.”

“Indeed. It is one of the benefits and dangers of being a Power.” Ansae nodded approval.

“Oh speaking of which! I got a weird thing. It said the Phantasmal Realm is part of my Power authority but I don’t know what the Phantasmal Realm actually is. I have a Field for it but Shayma and Iniri have actual Phantasmal Realm Skills.”

“I have never heard of a Phantasmal Realm.” Ansae said, grinning toothily. “Show me the field.”

I cordoned off a piece of land next to Shayma and Ansae with my mana before latching the Field onto it, the open door facing the two of them. Once again the physical world faded into shadows while mana flared into brilliant streamers, this time highlighting how it bent around Ansae as if she had a gravitational pull. There was even a very faint shift around Shayma, as if she were accumulating her own phantasmal mass.

“That is so strange to look at,” Shayma said. “It’s my [Phantasmal Path], but not quite.”

“It is odd,” Ansae agreed, padding closer and waving her forepaw through the boundary. On the inside, her scales and flesh manifested as a vast ocean, the only nod to its material reality being the shape. While with my improved mana-sight I had a better appreciation of her mana density, in the Phantasmal Realm it was like looking into moonlit water. There wasn’t mana streaming off her, nor did she did blaze as everything else did. She was dark and deep and everything about even that glimpse warned of sharks living in the shadows.

When prodding the Field failed to give her whatever answers she was looking for, she shifted down into amazon form and ducked through the doorway. She strolled into the middle of the Field, looking around curiously, this time unaffected by whatever the Field actually did. Then she stopped, slowly taking a full circle as she surveyed it. Then she flexed the tiniest bit of magic, and the damn thing shattered like glass.

“Fucking, ow.” It wasn’t exactly like having a wall broken, but it was close. [Genius Loci] fuzzed for a moment, either from pain or magical feedback.

“That wasn’t intentional.” Ansae grinned. “But now we’re even.”

“Wait,” Shayma said. “Even for what?”

“It turns out that [Mana Diamond Forge] is a little loud. I tested it before insulating it and it annoyed Ansae.”

“Oh, wow. I’m glad we didn’t stay to watch, then.” Shayma both knew how powerful something had to be to annoy Ansae, and that I was underselling it when I said that.

“I wouldn’t have advised it,” Ansae agreed. For some reason I wasn’t surprised she didn’t apologize. I had the feeling Ansae rarely apologized for anything, and our relationship, such as it was, still had prickles from Ansae’s eavesdropping. I wasn’t stupid, though. I had hurt her, even if unintentionally, and I would bet that she, and other Powers, didn’t simply let that sort of thing go. Now she had.

“So any idea what’s going on?”

“I believe this Phantasmal Realm isn’t so much a place as a perspective.” Ansae told us.

“But I can actually go into it and come back out,” Shayma objected, and demonstrated by popping out of existence and reappearing next to Ansae. “That seems to be a lot more than a perspective.”

“I’ve seen things like it before, but nothing so complete,” Ansae admitted. “Even a Power, even one such as Blue, can’t create an entirely new reality. Besides, there’s nothing in that Phantasmal Realm that doesn’t already exist. It simply changes which parts are important.”

“Then why can I move so fast?” Shayma challenged her. Ansae’s grin widened.

“How big do you think the world is, once you cut out all the unimportant parts?”

“That makes a weird sort of sense. I’m not exactly sure where it came from though. It’s not like I have any special insight into magic.”

“No, but you do have a special sort of insight,” Ansae pointed out. “You have all that unique knowledge that makes you view the world differently. It’s simply a guess, but that likely has played into this Phantasmal Realm. How and why it has manifested this way…” She spread her arms in an eloquent shrug. “One of the mysteries of Blue.”

“Well that’s reassuring. Thank you, Ansae.” If a something-thousand year old dragon didn’t know what was going on, I was pretty sure nobody did. Though what she’d told me actually was reassuring in its own way. I hadn’t broken into some eldritch basement dimension of crawling horrors just beyond sight, and exposed Shayma and Iniri in the process, I was simply looking at reality from a different point of view.

I was still skeptical that was the right explanation, especially since it had started with one of Shayma’s Skills rather than mine. Plus it hadn’t been recognized as a Power thing until it spread to Iniri, which implied there was some threshold that had to be met, and just having the Field wasn’t enough. I could speculate all day but in the end the number of data points I had was one.

“I would appreciate it if you’d set up another Field to study. In its own room, perhaps off the cottage? I’d love to see what I can do with it.”

“I could, but I’m a little worried about the status of trading favors with another Power. It’s probably a little late for it but I’m trying to be marginally smarter and not get in any deeper than I have been.” Ansae threw back her head and laughed.

“If we were tracking favors and debts we would need a staff. I do approve of your caution, though. I have a number of things I want and I’m sure you have a number of things you want. Perhaps we should deal?”

“As long as you don’t expect me to haggle. Yeah I have plenty of stuff I want but mostly I want you to make up with Shayma.”

“Hey!” Shayma objected. “That’s not fair, Blue.”

“Two of your friends are basically in the hospital and Iniri is busy with an army. If you’re on the outs with Ansae there aren’t many people left who you can hang out with.”

“Always a delight.” Ansae grinned. “I wouldn’t suggest treating any other Power this way, though. They’ll take advantage of you.” She gestured back toward the center of her lair, and Shayma reluctantly fell into step next to her. “I am sorry to have upset you, Shayma,” she said. “But the world we Powers inhabit is not a kind one. Yes, most people either cower or avoid us, but the ones who don’t are the most ruthless, the most power-hungry, the most deceitful. The most desperate.”

“Sounds fun,” Shayma said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“You and I fall under the category of desperate.” Ansae continued. “You didn’t have any choice but to trust Blue. I could, possibly, compel him. I’d rather not, but if he were planning to betray me I would have to be extraordinarily careful.” She shrugged. “He’s not. We can work on friendly terms. You have no idea how rare that is.”

“But how can we know we can trust you? You spied on us!”

“Yes, and I told you about it.” Ansae nodded. “I didn’t have to. You would have never known, but you would have wondered, especially if I said one betraying word. Better the wound that heals than the poison that festers. That which is necessary is neither good nor bad. It just is.” Shayma’s face twisted like she’d bitten into a lemon.

“I’m not sure I like it.”

“That’s good,” Ansae said. “It’s not very likeable.”

“Honestly I think that’s more something we can leave to Iniri. Let people who are already used to politics twist their heads in knots. I need you to continue being my bright light.” Shayma blinked, then laughed. It was the first genuine laugh since Ansae’s revelation, and it made me feel a lot better.

“You are a terrible flirt.”

“He absolutely is,” Ansae agreed.

“I was trying to be serious!”

“That just makes it worse!” Shayma grinned. Ansae grinned back.

“Let’s move onto other things I need before I get in trouble.”

Ansae just laughed.

I needed more silver, more gold. My gold supplies had almost been wiped out by the plug I’d put to keep myself from bleeding mana into the so-called perspective of the Phantasmal Realm, and now that I could produce argentum I wanted a nice big stock of silver so I could keep at it. Other elemental metals were less easy to specify, but I did convince Ansae to part with a large vial of mercury.

As I’d expected, quicksilver had certain well-known properties in alchemy and runework and ritual magic. The magic didn’t make it any less toxic though, so it wasn’t exactly in common use. Higher level classers or those with certain Skills could shrug off elemental mercury poisoning, though I doubted they’d be able to deal with organomercury compounds, but I was hoping once I put it through the [Mana Diamond Anvil] it’d be less dangerous. Considering from what I knew it had connotations of change and shifting I figured it’d make a perfect companion for Shayma’s shapeshifting if only I could decide what to do with it.

Ansae wanted more tayantan fruit, the juice and any food made from it, because even though she could only get maybe ten points of health, stamina, and mana from it a day, that was still far more than she was regenerating. Unfortunately it wasn’t like I had any of that stuff in actual production, and the pie Ansae liked so much was made by a third-tier Classer who had an actual [Advanced Pastry] Skill. Once I had Anton’s Village bound to me, though, it wouldn’t be any trouble getting a steady stream of goods. For the moment I just added some extra tayantan trees around Ansae’s cottage, altering the mana flows slightly to make sure they bloomed and fruited.

Shayma wanted extra clothing. I hadn’t much thought about the fact that most of her good clothes had been burned or sliced or otherwise mangled and destroyed. She also pointed out that Taelah probably needed new clothes too, especially if she was becoming a Companion, but it wasn’t like Ansae had some sort of magical auto-fitting wardrobe. She did have reams and reams of fairly magical cloth though, so Shayma took a bunch of that and some of the gold and silver I’d just gotten from Ansae and went find a tailor.

Which was less easy than it might be, considering the city was on lockdown under a giant black dome, but at least it confirmed that I could teleport people in and out while the [Relocate] was still building. I left her to it, since I was actually behind on my contribution to the defense.

If the Fortress was going to take up the land formerly occupied by Meil, then the stretch of ground outside the city walls was going to be the combat zone. Though I hadn’t bothered claiming it before, I did now. It took a trifling amount of mana to assimilate out a hundred meters of border that I promptly cleared, leaving nothing but grass and trees too widely spaced for cover. I could have made it stone but there were plenty of people with nature-based powers who needed the terrain. It was not lost on me that this was almost identical to the way Duenn had been defended.

Unlike Duenn, I didn’t have spellwork that I could use to boost those defenses. I did, however, have an explosive steam minefield I could lay. It might not do that much if the monsters were high level, but it was something. I had the LAEs too, for which I raised a bunch of short pillars near Meil to act as sources for the portals. I only had five LAEs made, and one was Shayma’s, but I needed all the pillars for the sake of coverage. Plus I was sure that at some point they’d get destroyed so I wanted backups.

The only area I didn’t modify was the stockpile where all the Classers were hanging out. Of course, they noticed my modifications and some of them started adding their own twists. A second-tier [Brass Binder] planted caltrop seeds, little beads of metal he sowed as if they were plants. A third-tier [Druid of the Living Lands] spent a great deal of time on a ritual on the woods just outside the cleared circle, at the end of which the trees shifted and muttered like an unruly crowd before settling down again.

Kind of creepy. I hadn’t seen any other third-tiers do something like that, but then again, the druid in question was a species I’d never seen before; summer-kin, and looked like her skin was made out of amber. It just reminded me of the map and the globe and how incredibly tiny the section of the world I’d seen truly was. For all I knew, other continents had swarms of level five hundred scientist-mages wrought of diamond and ivory and Tarnil was some provincial backwater. Scratch that, I knew Tarnil was a backwater, I just didn’t know how that reflected on the rest of the world.

In all it didn’t take me that long to set up the minefield, but I wanted to have a few more tricks than that. My answer was a giant lake of water and another of lava, both under pressure and with a portal at the bottom ready to go. I linked those up to Shayma as well, though she’d have to be careful about using them. Portals and momentum were a little bit weird and I was pretty sure if she just opened one of them up it’d end up launching her backward at speed.

With my obelisks though, I could use them to flood the battlefield pretty well and I could count at least three water casters and two fire casters that would probably appreciate it. Shayma said she’d pass that onto Iniri and whoever was going to be calling the shots on their side, since I didn’t trust I’d be able to recognize the best time to use them. I had many talents but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a tactical genius.

I wished I had more and better weapons, but my attempts at making a portal-fueled gun had ended poorly. At some unpredictable point the momentum of a projectile falling in an endless portal loop exceeded what the portal itself could handle. The portal failed, the loop stopped, and the projectile smashed into rock at whatever-many meters per second, ruining everything. It seemed portals acted a lot like artificial wormholes, with all the attendant issues, so I knew how hard they would be to properly weaponize. Besides, the impact I got from a failed attempt wasn’t even that powerful.

The [Relocate] finished just as it reached full dark, while I was still fiddling with my deployment details, snapping Meil into existence deep inside the mountain. The Grassland took a hit in its resource production, but otherwise didn’t seem to complain, but I couldn’t say the same about the people. I still had the lights on full, which generated a bunch of confusion. Oh well. I dimmed the lights a bit and let them work out what they wanted to do while I watched Iniri deploy the Adamant Fortress again.

While I was waiting for Meil to move I’d also put together a very large dynamo, in the form of a Volcano-Grassland-Glacier climate stack, in the hopes that would be enough to support the super-sized version she was planning. She strode out to the middle of the now-empty field of stone where the city had been, with Cheya and Joce and Keel alongside her, and set up the cubes again.

This time when she made the Fortress, she had an appreciative audience, and everyone was impressed with a massive building appearing out of nowhere. This time instead of a simple tower and a courtyard, the entire perimeter wall was studded with towers. The Fortress didn’t actually take up the whole space Meil had, but it was large enough that there were a good thirty towers, as well as barracks spaces, warehouses, messrooms, and all the other things that a real fortress needed. Then she opened up the front of it so everyone could start carrying the supplies in. As people started to spread out throughout the Fortress I saw that Annit and Keri actually had joined the Classers, which I took as an encouraging sign.

“So long as everyone stays inside the Fortress there shouldn’t be any Depletion issues, I don’t think. Right?”

“Probably. According to Iniri there are ways to get around Shield of Tarnil,” Shayma told me. She’d managed to find new clothes despite the [Relocate], simple tunic and hose and boots. While she was as it, she’d caught Taelah while she was still in Meil and delivered her a new dress of the same manufacture, which the alchemist appreciated. “My [Phantasmal Path] Skill lets me bypass it if I’m really careful, so there may be attack skills that do the same. Or we might see monsters teleport inside occasionally. There’s a reason we didn’t just look for ranged Classers. But someone like Tor Kot has so much mana that it’s almost impossible for him to make it inside that way, so I think we’ll be fine on Depletion.”

“He probably didn’t come himself anyway.” I was still certain that the mage-kings were somewhat vulnerable outside their dungeons, though Tor Kot was scary regardless. He was also too smart to try and hammer against a nearly invulnerable fortress himself, in my estimation, so if he did show it meant he had a plan. “Do you know when the army is supposed to get here?”

“No, I’d have to ask Iniri.” Shayma glanced around Meil, which was still subdued even if I didn’t see much outright panic. “I suppose it’s time for me to head over there.”

“Probably. Pretty much all the other Classers are there already. You just missed all the heavy lifting.”

“Oh no, how terrible,” Shayma grinned. “I’d better get going. There’s probably not that much longer.”

I pulled a teleport around her and dropped her off in front of the Adamant Fortress. There was still enough traffic in and out that I didn’t think that would get much of a blink, but apparently people knew who Shayma was. Some Classers stopped to gawk, others just got out of her way. Some people sidestepped without even seeing her coming, giving her an invisible bubble of space. The only exceptions to that were Sienne and Giorn, who spotted Shayma as they exited one of the messrooms and came over to give her a hug.

Eventually Shayma made it into the Fortress throne room, which was guarded even though Iniri had complete control over every aspect of the Fortress. Though considering the way my own attention was split and I barely noticed most of what was going on inside me, it was probably a good idea. The hovering cube with all its armatures and lenses would make a tempting target for any saboteur, not to mention Iniri herself. It couldn’t be shrouded with Iniri’s own [Shield of Tarnil] or else it couldn’t project the Fortress itself, so it remained a point of vulnerability. The queen waved as Shayma entered, forming another chair for her next to the throne. The instant furniture was handy, but I couldn’t imagine it was comfortable.

“When are they going to arrive?” Shayma inquired, taking the seat.

“Their advance scouts are already close enough to see us,” she said. “The bulk of the army will be here in six hours or so, but I don’t know if they intend to attack during the night. Classers might, depending on Skills, but this isn’t a Classer army.” Iniri frowned. “We just don’t know what to expect. Nobody has forty thousand Classers to throw at an army, and nobody has dealt with intelligent monsters coordinating like this. The hope is simply to bleed them and let them break most of their strength against the Fortress, until we have enough of an advantage to take the offensive.”

“I assume I’m in that plan somewhere too.” I said. Shayma was rather more polite when she translated it.

“Yes, of course. Your ability to manipulate the terrain will be vital. Especially for those Classes that need plant life or water or the like. If we had more of an idea of what to expect I’d have a better tactical outline for you, but I’m hoping I can just ask considering how fast you work.”

“Works for me.” I was hoping that I wouldn’t have any ANATHEMA problems this time, or at least fewer ones, but if I did Shayma would pass it on.

For some reason I’d expected another speech from Iniri but she was too busy dealing with the Fortress and discussing things with a couple of Classers that seemed to be her generals. Besides, everyone seemed to know what they were about, making up beds or setting up kitchens without complaint. That seemed maybe a little unusual, but then, Classers were probably used to doing all kinds of jobs for themselves and with their levels a little manual labor was nothing to worry about.

They were still putting the finishing touches on things when I spotted the first mantis-monster in the sky.