The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2

Chapter 6

Part 2

“The purchase was complete a minute later; the payment made, and the papers signed. We spent a

while chatting with King Raznoran and his family and retinue, and they wished us well in this fine

enterprise we’re embarking on.

“We’re renaming the island group Hiliani, which means New Hilia in Elvish. It’s now part of the

Principality of Hilia for all purposes of government and law. We chose it because it’s extremely isolated,

which makes casting the time-bubble easier, and because it’s bountiful enough to support many times

more people than we’ll have living there, even if we didn’t have magic to help. And because it’s a lot

like where me and Talia are from, to be honest. But with better weather.

“We have a week to do most of the building of our new homes and other buildings before the time-

bubble goes up. During that week we’ll also have to bring in everything else we need. We can finish

construction after we’re cut off as long as we have all the materials we need, but we might have less

power available for our spells after that, so we’ll be spending a lot of power to get as much done as we

can before then.

“There are a lot of big healthy trees, and Theramin says we should be able to grow most of our

buildings in them in the next week, using his elven horticultural techniques and a big expenditure of

power.

“Given the resources there, we figure our diet should have plenty of variety. There’s a big assortment of

edible plant life whose growth we can accelerate, and we can grow some garden crops to make up the

rest of our fruits and vegetables. Our meat will be about two-thirds fish and sea life, about one-sixth

birds and animals that we’ll hunt on the islands, and about one-sixth domesticated livestock.

“We think the best place for a settlement should be here; on the second biggest island, beside this

joining of four channels, almost in the middle of the archipelago. There’s this nice big flat area withnovelbin

scattered trees and minimal undergrowth between the beach and this semi-circle of small mountains.

It’s well sheltered from storms, there’s good fishing access, and there’s four streams that run through it

from the surrounding mountains.

“Talia and I will be making our home here, north of the flats, in these three trees across this little pass to

this little valley behind it, and we’re claiming the little valley as our back yard.

“We’ll build a gathering hall here in the center of the village for get-togethers and celebrations, and we’ll

build a few floating docks along the water’s edge here at the south end of the flats, where it’s too rocky

to really enjoy the beach anyway.

“Over the next hour or so we’ll finish planning the rest of the village. Since we’ll be building with elven

methods by growing our constructions out of the existing trees, Theramin here will be in charge of

construction and community systems, and he’ll be approving all your plans to make sure that no one

gets in anyone else’s way, and that everyone has a water supply to their property, and so on. He, along

with Yazadril, Nemia, myself, Talia, and Alilia, are going to cast a better scaled model Illusion of the

village site than this Revealing, and as you all tell us where you’d like to build and how much room

you’ll need, we’ll add it to the model. Even with all the garden space we could need, there’s enough

room on the flats for ten times our number to live there, so there shouldn’t be any real disagreements

over any one spot. You can have your rooms up in the trees like the elves do, or we can grow human-

style buildings on the ground, like they did with The Living Palace.

“West of the village here there’s this higher valley almost eight kilometers long, filled with lush

meadows, and the pass between it and the village is only a half kilometer long and pretty easily

passable, though it is steep. Since it’s the only good grassland around, and unicorns prefer living on

open grass to dwelling in buildings, we’ll be reserving that for our unicorn friends.

“There’s only four good caves suitable for dragon lairs in the archipelago, and none of them are big

enough for more than one small Dragon. Kragorram and Povon, since I assume that you and Karzog

would prefer to share a lair, we’ll be glad to help you enlarge one of these if you wish. And Quewanak,

if you’d like some help altering a cave, we’d be glad to help with that too.”

“That will not be necessary, thank you.” Quewanak replied. “I find none of those caves to be suitable,

and all of them are too far from the village to truly share in the life of the community, as I plan to do.

With all of your permissions, I will excavate a new cave for my lair in this rock face here, facing the

village from the south-west.”

“We would be glad to help with that, and Kragorram knows a thing or two about working stone.” Povon

told him. “If you don’t mind, we’ll also excavate a lair in that face, about three hundred meters south of

you, halfway between your lair and the docks here.”

“That would be fine, and I would be glad to help you with it as well.” Quewanak nodded. “If any of the

rest of you would like some shaped stones to use in your constructions for fireplaces and whatnot, we

can be quite specific in shaping the pieces of stone we are removing as we excavate, including uniform

blocks of any size.”

“Thank you Quewanak, I for one will take you up on that.” Mark chuckled. “I think some well-placed

stonework could add some nice variety to the uniform wood of our new homes.

“Is there anything else anyone wants to add before we get started on that? No?

“All right, we’ll cast the Illusion on the biggest lawn, so if we could get you there to please step back a

bit... Okay, there we go. We’ve already got our place, Yazadril’s, and Theramin’s shown. Everyone who

already knows what they want can step up and tell us, and we’ll put it in. We’ll add the rest as you

decide what you want.”

“I like the look of your new home, actually.” Mark’s grandfather commented. “It seems very practical.”

“And pretty!” his wife Sana added.

“Thanks.” Talia laughed. “It’s a compromise between human and elven designs, of course.”

At first glance, it looked like two fairly normal human-style small wooden houses with peaked roofs and

windows built between three great fir trees, each tree about five meters thick. The trees were almost in

a row but not quite, giving a slight angle between the two buildings that filled the spaces between them,

one eight meters in length, the other a meter shorter. A closer look revealed that the houses were

grown from the wood of the trees they adjoined, and elven-style windows in the trunks of the trees

revealed the presence of more rooms, reaching three stories high in the bottom of the trees, with

another small isolated room equipped with a balcony about twenty-five meters high in each.

The front of the house faced toward the center of the community, while at the rear there was a strip of

mossy open ground about twelve meters wide between the home and a steep rock face, with a narrow

pass about four meters wide directly behind the center of the house, that led to the tiny valley they’d

claimed as their back yard.

“We’ll have something similar to that here.” Sana decided as she pointed out her choice. “Between

these two trees beside the community center, facing toward the beach.

“Exactly. That’s beautiful.” she nodded as the building appeared in the Illusion.

“I don’t see that we’ll need any high lookout rooms in the trees though.” Markhan the senior chuckled. “I

can’t see me climbing that many stairs. Though I suppose one would be nice for the grandchildren.”

“Well then, we might as well build in the same style as well, to give the neighborhood some visual

cohesiveness.” Dalia decided. “We’ll build in and around this tree here, west of Talia’s place, with one

of those little houses on each side of the trunk.”