When we finish deciphering the first watchtower spell circle, Dizzi and Mirzayael are both equally excited to try it out.

  “I still need to hook it up to the network, first,” I tell them. “And get these cracks fixed.”

  In the couple of places where cracks intersect the runes, Dizzi and some of the other researchers have already finished sketching out the correct symbol with chalk.

  This is a rather delicate operation, I tell the Dungeon Core, drawing its attention to the circle. We need to be careful to preserve the face of this rock when we seal the cracks. And see where the chalk is?

  Yes, the Dungeon Core likes chalk! It’s soft and sweet and dissolves in just the best way.

  Well I’m happy to inform you it’s on the table, I say, smiling at the Core’s enthusiasm, even for something this small. But you’ll need to eat the stone beneath it as well, to a depth of one centimeter.

  Yay! The Dungeon Core enjoys eating multiple rocks at the same time. Sometimes they taste better together! Can it do it now?

  “Everyone ready?” I ask. The researchers have all retreated to the outskirts around the room, of which there’s just enough space to stand without touching the spell circle.

  “Ready!” Dizzi cries.

  I repeat my instructions to the Dungeon Core two more times, just to make sure it understands how crucial it is to not destroy the circle itself, and then stand back to let it work.

  With a sharp crack, the gaps in the floor snap closed, and a few of the researchers jump. The surface knits itself back together, smoothing any signs of the previous cracks away. Then the chalk hisses and sinks into the face of the stone, as if corroded by a layer of acid. In my head, I am presented with an impression of a massive tongue running across the floor, savoring every bit of crumbs it manages to lick away.

  “Well that’s fairly disturbing,” Mirzayael privately remarks.

  I hold in a chuckle. “At least it’s not simulating chewing sounds. I don’t even know where it learned that from.”

  It takes less than ten seconds to fix the spell circle.

  “Is that it?” Chert asks.

  “Dizzi, can you double check if all the runes look like they’ve been shaped correctly?” I ask her.

  “Of course!” she beckons the others closer. “Come on, everyone, take a look. Even the smallest detail could screw up the whole spell. Let’s go over them one by one.”

  As the researchers work their way around the room, I Check the spell circle. Previously, Echo had only been able to identify it as a [Damaged spell circle.] Now, however, she has a different message for me.

  [Check. Greater Shield Spell. Mana requirement: 100 mana per second.]

  I raise my eyebrows, rocking back on my heels. Dizzi and the others had already deduced that the purpose of the spell was to cast a protective barrier over the city. It’s good to get confirmation that they were correct. But it’s the incredibly high mana requirement that surprised me.

  I myself only have 500 base mana. Ollie has about double that amount. We could each only power the shield for a handful of seconds at most. Of course, from all the mana ore that was consumed before we raised the Fortress, the Dungeon Core and I have access to a pool of mana in the millions, but that’s the same mana pool that is powering the Fortress and keeping the cloudstone buoyant. It should only be used under extreme circumstances, and even then ensuring we don’t consume enough mana to cause the Fortress to lose its flight capabilities.

  “Looks good to us,” Dizzi reports, even though I already knew that to be the case. I wasn’t going to interrupt their investigation, however; I won’t be able to oversee the research for each of the other spell circles, especially the more damaged ones, and this is good practice for them.

  “Great,” I say. “I’ll link it back to the throne. What can you all tell me about the mana requirement?”

  They all crowd around once more, and a couple reach out to touch the circle. I dip into the Dungeon Core’s interface, allowing my mind to expand into the Core’s senses and sink beneath the stone. I trace the spell circuit through the city, searching for the break in its line.

  Dizzi makes an annoyed grumbling sound. “It doesn’t have an affinity requirement, which is good. Anyone should be able to operate it. But the amount of mana to activate it… It’s going to be a lot.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to do it,” one of the researchers admits.

  “Me neither,” says another.

  I find the break in the spell circuit a hundred meters down the line and quickly repair it. Though the spell circle may be dormant, it’s now connected back to the throne, which makes it connected to the Dungeon Core, which in turn means I can now remotely activate it.

  “You’re telling me this spell is inoperable?” Mirzayael asks.

  “No.” This is from Salvia. They’ve hardly said three words since they got here, instead sharply observing everything the others point out. From their mana levels and class, they’re clearly a warrior, not a mage, but the fact that they’re here to learn something outside their wheelhouse tells me they have an innate curiosity—or at the very least, ambition. Whatever the motive, I suspect they will become a valuable asset to the Fortress in some respect or another. Mirzayael is right; they may be young, but they’re inevitable leadership material.

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  “We can use multiple mages,” they say. “That’s why it was designed to be so large, and with extra space around the edges of the room. You could have perhaps twenty people standing around the perimeter. They could then pool their mana resources together to activate the spell.”

  “Bingo,” I say. A felis tips her head at the word. “I mean, precisely. I have some insight into how much mana it takes to power the spell. If I can document the mana reserves of all the guards and mages in the city—and anyone else who would volunteer to operate spell circles in a time of need—I should be able to quantify how many would be needed to power it, and for how long. But from my initial estimates, Ollie and I alone could activate it for about fifteen seconds. A group of ten young mages could probably do the same.”

  “Fifteen seconds?” Mirzayael repeats.

  Echo, can you begin to Check and compile a list of base Mana stores for all Fyrethians I encounter going forward?

  [Affirmative.] Immediately, the names and base Mana stats of everyone in this room appear in a list at the side of my vision. That list will quickly get overwhelming the moment I step before a crowd. I sort it from highest to lowest mana, then dismiss it to review later.

  “That hardly seems useful at all,” Mirzayael continues.

  “Depending on the timing of things, it could be critical,” I say. “But you’re right that it should be used judiciously. And if push comes to shove, we can use what the Dungeon Core has access to. Still, given this spell’s mana consumption, I suspect the effect will be exceptionally strong—at least, while active.”

  Mirzayael blows out a breath. “It’s more than we had before.” She adds mentally, “Does this affect your Role Range at all?”

  I pause to check. It has, minutely. The Role increased from 23.85% to 24.97%. That’s interesting, because I would have thought such a hugely impactful spell would have a greater impact on my range. Perhaps this is because it’s not currently in effect. As a test, I toggle off the ability to see species on the Dungeon Core’s map, and the thousands of dots on the interface vanish. My hypothesis was right: the range decreases to 13.29%. I quickly turn the capability back on.

  “It boosts it a little,” I tell Mirzayael. “But I suspect while the spell is activated, my range will grow exponentially.”

  “Good work,” I say aloud to everyone else. “Dizzi, I leave it to you how you wish to tackle the other three towers, be it continuing to work as a group or divide and conquer.”

  “I’ll do a preliminary assessment of each of the spell circles first and let you know,” she says. “It might depend on how damaged they are.”

  Or how violent. I’ve already spoken to her about the agreement I made with Mirzayael; we’ll start working on the defensive spell circles first, then work on anything that might be designed as a weapon with a smaller, trusted team. We started on this circle because Dizzi had already identified it as a defensive design.

  “I’ll leave it to you,” I say, stepping away. “Great job today.”

  As Dizzi excitedly speaks with the other researchers about their plan for the next week, Mirzayael and I depart. This was a nice break from my daily routine. It’s delightfully refreshing to get back to a bit of science, and witness a younger generation’s budding enthusiasm. But now it’s done, and there’s always something else for me to be doing, somewhere else for me to be.

  The same goes for Mirzayael. Wordlessly, we each head in a different direction, already focused on our next task, yet with our minds close it feels like we’re still walking side by side. I can faintly feel Mirzayael fretting about the boats we’d encountered the day before.

  “Worried they’ll swim up here without our knowing?” I tease.

  “I’m worried about the next group,” she says. The harbor for the fishing boats we’d traded with had been to the west, while our Fortress continues to drift east. From the maps they provided us with, we’ll be approaching another city tomorrow. Our first city.

  “What if they don’t receive us as kindly as the last?” she wonders.

  “It’s always a possibility,” I concede.

  “And even if we do, what do we have to offer?”

  Now that is a good question. We were able to scrounge together some unneeded coats and blankets the day before, but we don’t have much in the way of trade supplies or exports at this time. The fish the boats had given us were an absolute boon to us, but would surely be mundane to a coastal town.

  “We need to develop an economic plan,” I realize. The Fyrethians operate on a communal system. There’s various groups that have naturally arisen from this; Yequirael’s tailors, Mirzayael’s guards, Agate’s agriculture team, Torim’s water purification group. Many of these are divided along the affinities and skillsets of different species. People find where their skills are most needed and work there. The products of each group are distributed across the city evenly or, if there isn’t enough to accommodate everyone (as is more often the case) to whomever needs it the most. Our population is still small enough that this system has posed no issues prior to now. But if we’re going to engage in trade, we need to shape this into a more concrete, efficient system, and begin to think long term.

  Unfortunately, economics is something I know embarrassingly little about.

  “You should speak with Nek,” Mirzayael says. “He’s been tracking the city-wide inventory.”

  “Good idea.” Right, I don’t have to know economics. I have others I can rely on who are or will become the experts in these fields for me. Maybe he’ll have some ideas on where we are positioned to produce a surplus of some product.

  But knowing what our own people are capable of is only half the equation. We can’t produce an export no one is interested in importing. We know so little about the rest of the world. We need more information.

  I find Nek back in the red room. He’s speaking with the dwarf Agate.

  “I’m not interrupting?” I ask.

  Nek smiles wearily. “When there’s always something to be doing, interruptions lose all meaning.”

  “You deserve a break,” I tell him. We all do.

  “The Festival will be a break,” Nek says. “For one day, at least.”

  And yet, why do I suspect we’ll all just be working overtime?

  “Are we still on schedule?” I ask. The celebration is planned for one week from today, and already I can feel the mood in the Fortress begin to buzz with anticipation. There are no decorations yet—we don’t have much materials or time to spend on that—but there’s plenty of other things to look forward to.

  The arachnoid family who had brewed libations for our previous feast, when our colonies had reunited, has joined forces with some water purification dracid and a farmer from the agriculture team to create a new type of drink that might taste better than gasoline this time.

  The chefs were also delighted to be given the supply of fish to work with, and already are experimenting with new dishes.

  The water purification team is finishing moving our drinking water into the underground storage tanks, and talk has begun about starting to fill the bathhouse to be used again for its originally intended purposes.

  And rumors of Dizzi’s fireworks have already spread through the city to the extent that I worry she won’t be able to live up to their expectations.

  “Ahead of schedule, actually,” Nek happily reports. He sets aside the papers he was working on, and Agate bows his head to me as he departs. “The fish has helped a lot with that. We were going to have to spread the feast pretty thin before, but this is going to go a long way to make up for that.”

  “Do you suppose we’ve one or two fish to spare?” I ask him.

  “I don’t think that would be an issue.” His ears flick. “What for?”

  “Trade,” I say. “Which is another thing I’d like to discuss with you.” I gesture for him to follow. “Come. I’ll explain while we walk.”

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