”Ugh, that’s going to be a lot of work,” Laryn groaned. He stood in a blighted tile, looking down at the voidlord’s remains. The tile was no longer claimed by the void, but the blight remained. It would be a long time before the plant life rebounded. “I’ll have to drag it back to the core, in pieces.”

  “Being a ruler is a lot of work,” Adi said. “And you’re never going to accomplish your plan if you don’t get to work.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if I just sat at the core and sifted water?”

  “Based on the other void-things you’ve sifted so far, this is likely to give you around a dozen essence. Sifting that amount of water would take you… more than two hours, since you have to wait a dozen minutes between using [Sift].”

  “But then I could just hang around at the core…” Laryn insisted, even though he saw her point. Time wasn’t something he had to spare.

  “Ladling water into a bucket? Sounds like work to me. If you hadn’t wasted so much time complaining, you’d be halfway done with this by now.”

  Laryn got to work. He carried the small beetle-voidling to the core first. Sifting it gave him one water and one life essence. He returned to the much larger body of the voidlord and surveyed it.

  “What if I [Sift] the pieces individually?” he asked.

  “Better to do it all together,” Adi said. “Some essence is lost each time you sift, so you get a better result with a larger mass.”

  “So I shouldn’t chop it up?”

  “You can chop it up, just don’t sift until you have the whole thing over at the core.”

  “I think it’s time to claim more tiles. Most of this work isn’t even happening in my kingdom, and besides, I want my strength buff back,” Laryn said.

  He pulled up the map and selected the five tiles that he had sacrificed to rewind time and defeat the void lord. Completing the ring brought influence down to about three and a half per tile, but he felt the energy of the strength boost. The feeling forced a grin onto his face.

  “I’m pretty sore too,” Laryn said. “Will boosting my constitution help me heal faster?”

  “It will,” Adi said. “Even though it spreads out your influence, I’d recommend it.”

  Laryn selected the tiles to complete the ring. A warmth filled him, as his constitution was buffed. Sore muscles ached less. His smile broadened.

  “Congrats!” Adi said. “Your kingdom has reached Tier Two, and is now an [Encampment]!”

  “Great,” Laryn said dryly.

  “You’re now able to use [Temporal Thinking Space] anywhere you want, not just when you’re by the core or when you die. It will last for as many seconds as you have tiles claimed.”

  “Is that it?” Laryn asked.

  “Hey, that’s a good spell,” Adi protested. “But no. You have unlocked people management, and can also now add subjects or vassals to your kingdom. You can create basic custom classes and hierarchies. You can also make locks!”

  “Locks?”

  “Well, you don’t really have anything to lock up right now. But if you did, you could make special locks that can only be used by people of the correct class.”

  “Okay, so not that helpful. But the strength and constitution are nice.”

  He wondered what would have happened if they set up the core before crossing the river. Why had he been so eager to plunge so deep into the wildlands? To have more space to spread out, obviously. But still... He turned his attention back to the map.

  His kingdom now contained most of the beach and a large portion of the river. “Too bad I set the core up so close to the river,” he said.

  “It could be a good thing,” Adi said. “Your influence will make the river easier for you to cross.”

  Laryn nodded. As a warrior he’d enjoyed studying [Ruler] dilemmas, in preparation for his future role as an advisor to Yarin. But being in the position to make decisions himself gave him a whole different perspective. The trade-offs were real, and they were more challenging.

  He got to work on the voidlord. The whole process of cutting it up and dragging parts across the island was gory and tough.

  Less than two dozen minutes later, he carted the last piece of the void lord over to the core. This piece, a section of thorax with a leg attached to it. The carapace, mostly in one piece, contained the putrid innards of the creature. Laryn dumped it in a pile with the rest of the creature, then sifted it, excited to be rid of the stench.

  He counted the essence as he pressed the orbs into the core: Five water, and one of each of the other five elements.

  “What happens if I unclaim tiles?” Laryn asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like when I rewind time. Or if I selected a tile but no longer want it.”

  “You lose core essence. Depending on your influence. If you have one and a half average influence per tile, then unclaiming a tile will allow one to two essence to escape from the core.”

  “Hm,” Laryn mused. “So it’s probably not a good idea for me to claim areas that I don’t plan on keeping.”

  “Generally,” Adi said. “But never say never. Always keep your tool bag of tactics open to interesting strategies.”

  Laryn moved on to his next task: building a shelter. He couldn’t just sleep exposed on the beach for the next several weeks.

  The taller trees growing on the island were not inside his kingdom. With his influence at nearly two, he noticed the difference every time he crossed the border, as the sand became harder to walk on.

  The largest trees here were not much thicker than his arm. He cut down a few, using an axe which had survived the waterfall, then carted them back to the beach. For a time he considered building shelter in a more concealed place in the woods, but he didn’t want to be staying too far away from the core.

  Hauling the logs back into his kingdom, influence was once again a boon to him. The logs grew lighter in his arms as he crossed the border.

  Using the axe to chop off branches and cut spikes into the poles, he made a frame, notching the logs and tying the joints with cord. Finally he stretched a waxed cloth over the top, one they’d used to protect the contents of the wagon from the elements.

  A small shelter, protecting his supplies. Laryn admired his handiwork. It would suffice. As the son of a king, he rarely got the opportunity to work on things with his hands. Others always did things for him. The effort filled him with a sense of satisfaction that had long eluded him.

  “It looks great,” Adi said. “A palace fit for a king.”

  Laryn rolled his eyes but beamed at the praise. “What’s next on the list?” he asked.

  For the remainder of the day, Laryn carted more lumber into his kingdom. He chopped the poles to roughly equal length, sharpened their ends, and then tied three poles together in the center, forming defensive placements known as hedgehogs.

  Normally hedgehogs were not too challenging for attackers to deal with, but in a kingdom with a reasonable level of influence, they became more difficult; heavier, stiffer, harder to move or break, and better at piercing soft flesh.

  Because they required little skill to craft, Adi had agreed that they were a good place to start. Laryn set up a ring of them around the kingdom core.

  As he worked, he grew increasingly annoyed by the water. He’d erected the core in the shallows of the river, a place where not more than few fingers depth of water ran over the sand. The sand sloped gently up, breaking free of the water a few meters away. Beyond the core, the ground grew stony and quickly dropped off, down into the deep, fast current of the river.

  The constant splashing and wading had been nice at first, but Laryn decided he was going to need to make a change here. This was his kingdom after all.

  Besides, he needed a more comfortable place to work when he was sifting water.

  “That’s not on the list,” Adi complained as he started working. “What are you doing now?”

  He carried a large stone from higher up on the beach. “I’m making improvements,” he said.

  Placing the stone in the water, he looked around for another. He spotted an outcropping of rocks on a ridge of the beach, and collected them, placing them in a line to divert the river away from the core. He added sticks, twigs, and other detritus to his small wall, and shoveled sand on top of it.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Soon the water level had fallen around the kingdom core, revealing the sandy shore on which it sat.

  “That’s not going to last very long,” Adi said. “Influence might make things easier or harder for people and animals, but it doesn’t affect the elements.”

  “That’s fine,” Laryn said. “I just wanted to be dry for a while.”

  He got back to work constructing hedgehogs.

  The sun hung low in the west when he finished his ring. A prickly fence, about 5 feet tall encircled the kingdom core. He’d left a gap, facing his shelter, where he could easily enter and exit. He had lashed horizontal logs between hedgehogs, and had protected a comfortable area. The defenses didn’t look like much, but Laryn was proud of them. And they would help protect him from being overrun by a swarm of voidlings.

  “If I had this yesterday,” Laryn mused, “I could have stood in the gap and fought, without being snuck up on as easily.”

  “Great work!” Adi said, marking off the item from her list. “Now for some more—”

  “Now for a break,” Laryn said. “I’m hungry.”

  He broke open a package of cured meats for his dinner. A slight chill touched the air, and he began imagining how nice it would be to have a hot meal again. Certainly a camp fire would be nice, tonight.

  When he’d finished eating, he collected armfuls of dead wood from the ground, branches and sticks that had fallen and dried out. These he piled into a hollow between his shelter and the kingdom core. Using a flint and knife, he got a small spark going. The fire took, and soon he sat on a rock, staring into the dancing flames.

  “You really should get back to work,” Adi said, lurking over his shoulder. “At least sift a few barrels of water tonight. You’re getting an influence debuff, so that’s a high value activity right now.”

  Laryn thought about that. “Adding water essence to the core will increase my total influence,” he said. “But it will also decrease the debuff, which will increase total influence even more?”

  “That’s right!” Adi said. "I like your thinking! It’s not a debuff. It’s a bonus!”

  The sun had already set. The sky glowed pale and pink in the west. Laryn sighed. He figured she was right. The more he could get done now, the better.

  He left his fire burning and walked over to the kingdom core. He passed through the gap in his fence, and approached the barrel. Smiling as he walked on dry sand, he glanced over at his low wall, still diverting the river.

  At that moment, he realized his mistake. He’d diverted the water away from the core. No longer could he simply stand there and scoop water into the barrel.

  Laryn groaned and smacked his forehead against the lip of the barrel. “Ah,” he said.

  Adi, to her credit, did not gloat. She merely smiled as Laryn walked over to his water diverter and kicked portions of it over, letting the river water flow back over the sand toward the core. The movement gave him an idea.

  “I’m going to make a better process for sifting water,” Laryn said. “Maybe I’ll build a pump that will fill the barrel for me. Or I’ll dig a hole, put the barrel in it, and then run a channel along the beach so it will fill up by itself.”

  “Sounds like quite the time commitment,” Adi said. “You sure you’re going to stick around that long?”

  Laryn ignored her sass and got to work scooping the shallow water into his barrel. The light faded from the sky as he worked, the fire he’d constructed dying down to glowing embers.

  He sifted two barrels of water, feeding the elemental essence into the core before it grew too dark for him to continue working.

  Then he returned to his place at the fire, and added more fuel. Stoking the flames, he stared into the dancing, twisting light, and pondered his predicament.

  Something strange was going on out here, in the wild lands. There was too much void, too far south. Not enough goblins.

  He wished that he’d talked to Keldin earlier. Told him about his plans. They could have discussed things, and talked about locating the optimal starting point for the new kingdom.

  The truth was killing Alzar had rattled Laryn. The man had snooped around and discovered the core. When he confronted Laryn, he’d seen no other option but to kill him before he ruined the whole plan. In the back of his mind, he worried that Keldin would react badly too.

  What would Keldin be doing right now, if he was still alive? If Laryn had died, and Keldin survived?

  He knew the answer to that one. Keldin would be working desperately, day and night, to grow the kingdom. To claim as many tiles as possible, and rewind time to bring Laryn back.

  The realization helped a few things click into place for him. He needed to learn to be a [Ruler], and fast. Daydreaming about being in charge was much different from actually doing it, and Laryn didn’t even have any subjects yet.

  ”I don’t think we’re on the trail anymore,” Coril said, calling for a halt. The sun had set hours ago, and the group of tired villagers huddled around.

  “What do you mean?” Tasam asked, holding up a large parchment map, illegible in the darkness. A twelve year old girl clung to his arm.

  “We’re beating our way through undergrowth and weeds,” Coril said, grabbing the other man by the arm. “There could be a perfectly smooth path six meters that way and we’d never know in the darkness.”

  “This is the right way,” Tasam protested, scrutinizing the markings on his map. “Doesn’t this seem to match up, Talia?” he asked the girl. She shrugged.

  “Admit it,” Coril said. “We’re lost.”

  “We’re here somewhere,” Tasam said, circling a large area on the map with his finger.

  “Lost,” Coril concluded. “We’ll try again in the morning.”

  “But the void—”

  “We’ve been wandering in these woods for two days. We’re low on food and water. Everyone is exhausted. For all I know, you’re leading us right back to the bloom that destroyed the village!”

  Tasam sighed and looked up from his map. “I suppose we can wait until morning,” he said. Absent mindedly patting Talia’s head, he continued. “But Coril, we agreed that you and I would make decisions together. You should have talked to me before calling a stop. It would have been better for us to reason it out—”

  Coril rolled his eyes. “It’s not a big deal, Tasam. We—”

  “We don’t have a [Ruler], anymore,” Tasam said. “And neither you nor I is qualified to be one. You’re a warrior, and I’m an advisor. We agreed that things would be better…”

  Coril waved his hand frustratedly. “I know what we agreed,” he said. “You’re the only one who can—allegedly—read the map and navigate by starlight. Though I’m starting to wonder about that.”

  Hela approached the two of them, beads jangling around her neck. “We don’t have time to spare,” she said ominously. “The void encroaches.” She planted her walking stick in the mud and leaned on it, staring at Coril and Tasam with dark eyes.

  “We’re lost,” Coril said. “Tasam won’t admit it, but we’ve probably just been walking in circles.”

  “We have to warn them at Townshold,” Hela said. “Before it’s too late.”

  Coril smiled at the woman. “Of course we will. We’ve been walking ourselves to death to make sure we reach them before the void catches us. A little rest tonight, and we’ll be on our way in the morning.”

  He brushed past Hela, tightening his jaw.

  The villagers burrowed into the undergrowth, trying to find comfortable places to sleep for the night. Since the destruction of Jardensvale two days ago, they’d had little rest. Hela insisted that the void pursued them, and that they had to warn Townshold.

  Coril was starting to doubt that. He doubted that Tasam knew much about the map he followed. And Coril knew he’d made a mistake by agreeing to share leadership with Tasam.

  Jarden had been a good [Ruler]. And he’d also been Coril’s brother. He’d watched Jarden work, knew him well, and believed that he could do as good, if not better, as a [Ruler]. But Tasam had insisted, and he was the only one who could find the way to Townshold, so Coril had relented.

  A mistake, for sure.

  “Mommy, look, a light!”

  A little girl—who’s name Coril had forgotten—clung to her mother’s neck. Her mother—who’s name Coril had also forgotten—smoothed the girl’s hair, and peered through the darkness in the direction she pointed. Coril smiled. The woman was quite pretty. Her husband had died fighting voidlings a few days ago, too.

  The woman gasped. Coril turned and looked. In the distance, a pinprick of orange light flickered between the branches of the trees.

  The light flickered in the distance, then faded out.

  Tasam approached Coril, peering through the foliage.

  “Could that be the path?” Coril asked.

  “It’s too far south,” Tasam said. “It’s more likely to be goblins, I think.”

  “We haven’t run into goblins for ages,” Coril said. “They stay in Grekhol. What would they be doing so far south?”

  “I don’t know,” Tasam said. “But we should probably avoid that area, just to be safe.”

  “It could be people,” Coril countered. “It could be someone who could help us. Who actually knows where we are.”

  The two men stared at each other in the darkness, neither one of them backing down. Coril gritted his teeth.

  “We’ve stopped for the night now,” Tasam said. “Let’s discuss it in the morning.”