My Rune of Earth was still glowing, and the grass, leaves, dirt, and brush was unceremoniously buried or shoved out beyond the edges of the stone and the low walls that suddenly rose out of the ground to keep them back.

More importantly, columns flowed up out of the ground as a hundred-foot circle filled the clearing, and then joined together across their tops, forming first arches of stone to a great central column in the middle of the road, and then a roof of slated stone tiles above, closing out the night and rains and forming a pavilion for shelter big enough to easily fit everyone without problems.

Benches, hitching posts and similar conveniences flowed up and formed from the stone of the place in front of their eyes, forming easy places to park the wagons, gather the mounts and place their food, among other things.

The others looked around like this was all expected as my Runework finally faded. "That is some impressive cryptomancy, Lady Edge," Hammel spoke up respectfully. "I had no idea you could make such effects last so long!"

"Changing the duration from power-based to concentration-based does take some experimentation and some practice," I admitted to him offhandedly. Like, years of the stuff, even with an intellect like mine. I could show him the methods much faster than it took me to discover them, of course. I was limited in radius because I was downplaying my Caster Level for them, but ah well, it was fine.

3200 square feet of ground a foot deep was a double-lane twenty-four feet wide with up to eight-foot shoulders to boot, eighty feet long, every six seconds. It couldn't keep pace with me at full speed, but it was the equivalent of a really fast trot for most humans or a steady trot for horses, so we'd done okay on the progress… and the mounts really liked the smoother ground.

The Zanzyrans naturally weren't fazed by any of this happening, just higher-order magic they'd be able to emulate in time, or at least do something similar in other elements or something. Hammel was naturally ecstatic at seeing earth-Shaping on this level and was eagerly examining everything I'd put up.

I waved my hand, and Mass Phantom Servants fluttered out as spectral skeletons in tuxedos, with red roses in their lapels and top hats, the resemblance to Duum strangely fitting. My Bat called out serenely from his post in a fine Transyvian accent, "All Servants to attention!" The horde of them turned around and saluted him as the gaping Warsherz natives looked on in terror. "You will be marching around the pavilion all night, making sure nothing disturbs us! Evenly spaced, to your posts, and trot to it!"

Spectral heels clicked faintly, phantom canes appeared in hand, and with a jaunty brisk stride and spinning sticks, the Servants swaggered out the large gate towards the road in two lines, splitting apart to patrol in both directions.

I was sorely tempted to set up a brisk beat for them to start dancing to. Wouldn't that have just blown some minds?

The natives gaped, while we set up our camp and ignored the show without the slightest flicker of an eye. Every student here was familiar with necromancy, and Phantom Servants weren't even that, just shadows of spirits conjured up for a specific purpose. The students were all perfectly aware these Servants had no combat power at all… but how many people were going to just try to sneak up on a well-lit pavilion surrounded by strutting skeletons moving around?

Sir Horn and Izzimaior had both remarked that many of the people of his homeland were not well-educated, and were quite superstitious as a result of such things. The Siricilans coming in tended to pretend they were more sophisticated, but oft-times ended up being much the same, with all the weird fey in the countryside, ancient ruins spooking them, fell beasts wandering around not found in the heartlands of the Empire, and all that. It took them a while to overcome their fear of what was going on, hushed whispers and all that combined with frequent glances our way and dire stories of witches and worse things.

Zanzyran wizards, we brought out the best in people.

In comparison to the rubes, we were laughing and talking, especially about all the ruins that we'd seen on the way. It seemed like almost every hill or other had a ruined tower, wall, or small keep situated on it, often visible, sometimes mostly overgrown by brushwork, and Izzi was in his element, fishing in memory for tales concerning them. The remnants of trails had led here and there, and Duum had reported a bunch of abandoned villages visible from overhead, the walls and homes crumbling and collapsing with time and the elements, but with at least two of them being used by orcs and goblins at some distance from us.

Soon enough a folding grill was out and slices of pork from a small boar Duum had thoughtfully acquired for us earlier in the day were a-roasting away in a fire-stand I tossed an Eternal Fire into because I could.

Braun turned out to have a talent for grillwork, and started slicing off ribs while seeing what we had available for sauces, which turned out to be pretty impressive. Some elfin was carrying around, uh, well, not a full alchemy lab, but certainly a lot of one, and if it spilled over into a fairly extensive collection of culinary stuff, well, combicha didn't make itself, so if it came up I needed the material right there, right?

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

A sauce with some spirit for some fresh ribs, now, that was rather easy to make up, and a couple of others for the other cuts coming off that pig soon joined them in being slathered over the impromptu grill.

There was a lot of pig, the wagoners were salivating, and Braun looked as normal as the rest of us. So even if the blue sauce glowed a little bit and their breath was minty fresh after they had some bowls of it melting in their mouths, they endured because hot fresh food and some good Federyn wine was worth putting up with silent skeletons in top hats spinning canes in coordinated semi-dance marching parade, hop to the left, shift to the right, around the pavilion.

There were definitely surviving orcs and goblins in the area, and they were definitely warned by the members of the ambush who got themselves dead. Strangely enough, they didn't feel much like attacking when they saw the new pavilion made up out of nowhere… or maybe it was the big Bat sitting up there crouching in the center of the roof, red eyes clearly visible looking right at them all night.

Hard to say, really. It could have been they grew a lick of common sense, after all…

------

I still had an aversion to dirt roads.

This was an old land here. Once, long ago, it had been part of the Eonic Empire, although the main branch of the Empire was west and south of here.

That Empire had long ago splintered, died, separated, and the survivors fled here over two thousand years ago, intermixing with the natives and forming the people called the Hellenar today.

History hadn't been kind to them. Fractious and chaotic, prone to infighting among themselves rather than allying up to make something greater, and during those rare moments when they united being assaulted by invasions of gnolls, orcs, ogres, and worse, the people of this place had been hit and hammered hard time and again. Nobles and kings and those who would be either had come and gone, cities and petty kingdoms springing up and washing away with the tides of time and war, and even Siricil next door hadn't had much to do with them, despite all its conquering habits.

That was, until about sixty years ago, when some Emperor wanted an easy victory and the Siricilans had come in and conquered the whole place without a whole bunch of effort, as disunified as the natives were. They naturally treated the Hellenar like lower-class folk only there to be exploited and bossed around, and brought the worst traditions of slavery, repression, and exploiting others for one's own gain with them to worsen the pot and make a bad situation not any better.

The Archduke's arrival after swapping his home lands for this 'jewel in the rough' hadn't really improved matters all that much. Personally honorable, he simply didn't have enough eyes watching everywhere, he blatantly favored his own people, and both the laws and justice weren't equal in the eyes of anyone, meaning they weren't respected at all by the native populace, and were only paid lip service to outside the Archduke's own loyal forces.

As a result, this land had not advanced, had not recovered, and didn't really have the heart or spirit in it here to solve its own problems.

Sir Horn was actually a member of the native Hellenar, not a Siricilan, with a long family history of being protectors of the people that the conquerors had basically invalidated, forcing him to leave his own homeland or face execution if he dared take up his family name and sword in the land of his birth.

It wasn't a good situation for him by any stretch of the imagination, and adventuring was dangerous work more likely to send him to a grave than it was to a brighter future.

He would have died silently behind the unbreakable doors of the Thisbean Inn without me, so he'd gotten pretty lucky indeed.

Most interestingly, he had come from Culm.

Culm had one of those, eh, interesting histories. That was mostly because it was built on the ruins of two older villages several centuries old, and it was the first place in the Hellenar lands that had tolerated working with the orcs and even ogres. It hadn't been overly violent about it, and there'd certainly been fighting, but non-combatant orcs and ogres had actually worked in the area, traded with humans, and the races managed to tolerate one another enough to sort of build up a society here.

The rest of the land hadn't really liked that, and went to war about it… a war they were winning, until a local noble who held a lot of power here got the local humans, orcs, and ogres to follow him, set himself up as literally the Dark Lord, and proved to be a most potent necromancer and later a vampire.

It took the natives almost sixty years and a lot of time and blood before he was finally hounded out of these lands, and he fled north, to Zanzyr, there disguising his nature and managing to finagle himself a prominent position among the princes of the nation of wizards in its earlier stages.

His name was Mordai Gorevitch-Woszlany, the name of his noble house long forgotten around here (and likely to be spit upon if its origins were uncovered by anyone).

He was, naturally enough, my grandfather, so I was actually arriving at my truly ancestral lands. Sir Horn, he came from the Viggorany, retainers to the Gorevitch family and actually ancient huscarls and black knights of the highest order in service to the man who would become probably the most powerful vampire alive on the continent of Olos.

Sir Horn wasn't aware of any of that, however. His family's history had been lost in war, strife, the revenge of their enemies, and a whole lot of time, fire, disaster, and people choosing to conceal the past and forget about it all.

Some of the local elven tribes might know the names of the fallen noble lines from back then, but it was hardly a problem of heritage, after so many generations of actually fairly upright service from them.

Besides, it was the Siricilans who chased Sir Horn out of the land, not his own people.

I hadn't told Sir Horn any of that, however. Reading up on the family history in the Twilight Library had been entertaining, but not something to hold over him. I'd naturally had the Sims all looking for where important people had come from, what they'd done, and finding out dear old grand-dad actually used to be the Dark Lord of the Raker Coast was another one of those eye-rolling moments I was glad no one was around to see.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.