Two days passed since Lord Albinus and I spoke in private regarding the fate of the butcher and what I along with Calavia would be doing in Lindum. Lord Albinus of course agreed to allow us to build a home and cultivate some of the nearby land for growing ingredients, and to keep things steady and properly documented he assigned to us his locator.

  The locator was a middle aged human man by the name of Sven, he was born in the empire long before the current emperor and found good success in architecture in the city of Lindum. It took only a handful of years before he had built a handful of villages and attracted the attention of Lord Albinus himself and was assigned as his locator.

  Calavia and I watched Sven walk around the area we had found an interest in. It was located roughly two hours away from the city while slightly elevated giving a good view with a decent sized forest a small walk away to the east. The earth did have a mix of some stones but that wasn't anything I couldn’t deal with given my geomantic skills, what we were worried about was if the land was actually good for growing anything and if it would be stable.

  For a while we watched half curious and worried as Sven dug into the earth and performed strange tests that we didn’t understand with what appeared to be simple everyday objects. When he finally finished he had a small smile on his face as he approached us.

  “Good news!” he exclaimed with his arms gestured to his sides like a performer. “This is a good place to start building. The earth is stable and fertile enough to grow food, the only issue being the stones mixed in with it, but I have a feeling you have a way around that.”

  “We do, is there anything else that needs to be taken care of before we start building?” I asked. I wasn’t going to be the person to turn down professional help.

  “A few things actually, but the first would be creating proper blueprints for the main building which in this case is the tower.” Sven reached into his bag filled with scrolls and other things a scribe or locator might need and out came a familiar piece of paper that he unrolled and displayed to the both of us.

  “This tower that you designed will require some time to create a proper blueprint with correct dimensions as well as a list of the materials. Given that you are here right now it would be a good time to decide what you actually want the tower to be made of.”

  “Well the floors will most certainly be made of wood, and we will have no shortage of that.” I said gesturing to the forest behind Sven. “That just leaves what the actual walls of the tower will be made of.”

  “The most obvious choice would be stone, but that would take considerable effort given the fact the nearest quarry is a handful of hours away on the other side of Lindum. That isn’t even factoring the cost of such a thing.” Sven said as he started pacing around, he even started chewing on the end of a quill like a nervous habit.

  “There are some small caves and large stones scattered throughout the area, could we not use those and then decide if we need to bring in more stones from the quarry.” I suggested. For a moment Sven looked like he was about to shut the idea down entirely, but he stopped himself and thought for a moment before speaking again.

  “That would be dependent on what the two of you can do with your magic. If you can cut and then shape the stone into the correct shapes then it could be done, otherwise we will need to get it from the quarry or decide on another building material.”

  “That can be done.” I quickly replied. “I am quite skilled in geomancy, in fact it is what I specialize in. We also have a wagon and horse to transport the stones over so we don’t need to go out of our way to buy more.”

  “I would actually suggest buying another horse and having them both pull the wagon.” Sven said, raising his hand to stop me. “Stone is quite heavy after all and using two horses would drastically reduce the chance of injuries and reduce the strain they incur.”

  “That can be done. We have no shortage of coin with all the potions I have been selling.”

  “That is good to hear. Would you be willing to go take care of the horses as soon as possible? I still need to work on the blueprints, perhaps the two of you would be willing to give your input on the exterior and the interior first thing tomorrow morning. You will be the ones living there after all.”

  “Where can we find you once we have everything read?”

  “I have a residence in the city just south of the lord’s residence. It is actually the smallest building in the area so you should have no difficulty finding it.”

  ***********

  A day passed as we began our preparations for breaking ground. I had found another decent horse and had it hitched up to the wagon while Calavia spent her time looking through the forest for any sources of stone no matter how small. We didn’t actually get a look at the blueprint that Sven wrote up the night before until we arrived at the building sight.

  Only when I made a table out of nearby earth did he place it down to give us the full picture.

  “Well that is certainly an improvement.” I couldn’t help but say as I traced my hand along the fine strokes of ink that traced the large piece of paper.

  “Well this one actually has proper measurements. Now we actually know how much material we will need before we start building it.” Calavia said as she pointed to the measurements.

  “Truth be told these are mostly rough measurements. The idea was to have the inside of the tower be around 18 feet in length and width, and it says right here the outside of the wall is 20 feet in length.” Sven said pointing to the measurements for both the interior and the exterior. “In truth the outside length will depend on the quality of the stone, if we get some very good stone we can reduce the size, otherwise we will have stone blocks that are a foot in width.”

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  “What about those places with stone you took a look at Calavia? Would you say they were of good quality?”

  “I am not a stonemason, Arthur.” Calavia said with a slight glare. “I found a few exposed caves and big rocks that likely rolled down from the Nievis pass some time in the last one thousand years. If they have been around for so long then they should do us perfectly.”

  “We should take a look in that case.” Sven said suddenly as he stepped between us. “It would also be best to bring your cart, we might as well bring some stone back with us.”

  With that the three of us quickly loaded up into the wagon and rode towards the first location Calavia had written down on a map.

  “Are you sure you naked this down correctly? We should be there by now according to this map.” I asked looking up from the map Calavia handed me while she steered.

  “I know where we are going, just trust me. Look, it's right there.”

  My eyes followed her finger and there was a big rock around twenty meters ahead of us partly blocked by a tree. Calavia steered the wagon so we were right next to rock and jumped out with Sven and myself in two.

  “See, I told you.” Calavia said with a wide grin on her face as Sven started looking over the surface of the rock. I did my best to avoid her big grin but she instantly followed me until I eventually gave in.

  “All right, all right. You were right.” Calavia didn’t say anything in response, she just grinned wider and turned to see what Sven was doing. Just a few moments later Sven stood up straight and had important news to share with us.

  “Good news, this limestone rock is good enough to be used in our construction. In fact we should be able to get four good stone blocks with a little left over to spare.”

  “That is good news. Where do you want me to break it apart?” I asked as I kneeled down.

  With just a few strokes with a small rock he picked up somewhere Sven marked where he wanted the ‘cuts’ so to speak to be made, making white a plus shape. But as I reached out to touch the rock to begin Sven had one last question.

  “Just out of curiosity how many times have you done this?”

  I looked up at him with a mixed expression as I processed what he was asking. “This would be the first time for me.” I admitted, which based on his response was not the answer Sven was hoping for.

  “Oh, that is a small shame. How many other rocks and like did you say there were Lady Calavia?”

  “Thirteen other rocks all about the same size and four small caves, all of which were uninhabited when I looked.”

  “That is good to hear, so don’t feel too bad if you make some mistakes here Sir Arthur. We have plenty of other backups just for the occasion.” I had to resist the urge to stand back up and give him a swift backhand as I started cutting the rock apart.

  Though cutting might not be the correct word to describe what I was doing.

  A more accurate description of what I was doing would be tearing the rock apart at precise parts and wedging something between the small cracks that formed before striking it with a hammer to force them wider. It required most of my focus and control to do in a swift and efficient manner, if I had chosen to say or even think about anything else there was a good chance I would have failed.

  I could feel Calavia and Sven watching me from behind as they held their breath. Slowly the rock broke apart from the top, just one at first but it was quickly followed by a second.

  “Oh shit.” Calavia called out as he sighed and turned away. “You were keeping us on edge.”

  “She is right. But I must admit this was an unexpected outcome.” Sven followed with his own comments as he stepped up to the rough pieces of stone I broke off.

  “Well perhaps next time you should avoid vocalizing your negative beliefs to the person they are about.” I said as I picked up the piece of rock closest to Sven and picked it up. Sven looked at me with wide building eyes and didn’t move, only when I carried the piece of rock right up to him and was about to hand it to him did he say or do anything.

  “I- I don’t think I can lift that Sir Arthur.” Sven stuttered as he took several steps back.

  “Fine, I will just do it myself.” I shook my head and started walking towards the wagon with the rough and heavy stone block in my hands. I did the same with the second before I started ‘cutting’ again, and this time he didn’t have anything to say. When I was done I carried those blocks as well to the wagon before Calavia climbed up with me.

  But just before Sven could climb on I interrupted him.

  “Now hang on a minute, Sven. I don’t think there is anything else you can do with us out here. Instead, why don’t you go to the building site and set everything else up while we collect more stone?”

  Sven looked at me with a hurt look on his face, but he didn’t disagree and just nodded. “Of course Sir Arthur. I will go ahead and do that. Please return as soon as you can.”

  With a quick flick of the reins the horses started up again and we continued on our way to the next spot Calavia marked on the map. For several minutes Calavia sat in silence with just the sounds of the forest and the wagon to fill the void, until she decided to speak up.

  “So how exactly did you lift those big blocks of stone Arthur?”

  I turned my head slightly to glance at Calavia. “I'm not sure what you mean by that.”

  “Sure you don’t.” She leaned forwards with her eyes trained on me the whole time. “It's just that each piece of stone you picked up easily weighed about as much as me in a much smaller frame, most likely far more if using proper measurements.”

  I couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle which peaked Calavia’s interest, she was now nestled right next to me and leaning into my view with a soft smile.

  “Oh alright.” I cried out and Calavia finally leaned back.

  “Well then, tell me what you did.”

  “I just played a small joke on him after his rude choice of words.”

  “And?”

  “And I just used geomancy to lift the stone up, reducing the strength I needed to lift it up. It gave the illusion that I was far stronger than I really am when I lifted it up so casually.”

  “And you needed to rub that into Sven’s face?”

  “He wasn’t exactly being very nice himself. You do remember what he said, don’t you?”

  “Well… You aren't exactly wrong with your assessment, but you didn’t exactly change his mind. All you really did was be mean right back at him. Maybe you should have told him to be a bit nicer to you.”

  I was about to open my mouth to say something, to dismiss such an idea, but something stopped me. She was right, I didn’t really change Sven’s mind, but I honestly had many doubts if he would have accepted a simple ‘please stop.’