[Inspect, Power]

  Juliet reached me first, but Mossbeard was still bearing down on me as well.

  “Juliet, thank you so much for your help.”

  “Rose, I have thirty two families that need homes, as soon as possible.”

  “Alright Juliet no problem, how about I make housing tomorrow morning for thirty two families in my fictional world hilltop, then Mossbeard and I will install two way portals, between the farms and their temporary housing. I will author houses to match the four townhouse designs and we can assign living arrangements that you draw up for each quad farm. By the way was there much push back on having all the townhouses part of one larger building? Did anyone show much interest in the communal kitchen and dining room large enough for twenty four people?”

  “Only one farmer strenuously objected, which made it easy to eliminate him from the project entirely. Most of the women, farmers or wives of farmers were enthusiastic over not having to cook everyday. But also liked that they had a private kitchen for when they wanted too. The farmers liked the communal dining room for meetings regarding farm business. You can lead a horse to water Rose, we’ll just have to wait and see if the rooms are used.”

  Mossbeard asked, “Could I interrupt for one second? Mas wants to know if you can jump him some equipment from his lab as soon as possible?”

  “Sure, let me finish talking with Juliet, and I’ll be right over, Mossbeard.”

  “By the end of this week, I need to be back working on my own farm, so you need someone to vet the applicants, I’d suggest Paula.”

  “Paula’s great but she doesn’t know about farming Juliet. Plus she’s handling the vendors.”

  “Hand off the vendors to Ruby, and let Paula take over the applicants. It's the more important job. The vendors can be bullied, you are their sole source of products, plus I’ll jump old MacDonald here every morning and come back for him every night. He’s the one that taught me everything I know he can help Paula pick the finest farmers. We’ll also need seeds and equipment for the first thirty two farms as well tomorrow morning.”

  “Alright, what time are the families arriving here tomorrow?”

  “Eight.”

  “Alright I’ll be here by eight.”

  Then I walked over to the lumber mill.

  “Rose great, could you please jump me home, I’ll show you what equipment I need and after you author it we can jump it into the lumber mill. Do you think that the magical field will keep batteries charged?”

  “I can’t say for certain, Mas, but that seems to be how the fields work. For instance Lily’s bakery has a wood stove that is always hot even though no one ever adds wood to the stove, the same thing with the ovens. So I have to assume that it’d work the same. Let’s go get the stuff and you can test it out tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I’m good, the gnomes work till ten, I’ll stay with them and test out the equipment and maybe we’ll have a working lumbermill by tomorrow. The next thing we need to build is a flour mill, but we won’t worry about that today.”

  “Mas thank you for doing this, just take your time, this doesn’t have to be done by tomorrow.”

  “I know Rose and I appreciate the concern but I love building gadgets. This is going to be my biggest gadget to date, let’s just jump and get the stuff, okay?”

  So I jumped us to Mas’s lab in Tregaron’s barn. He pulled out a couple of electronic supplier catalogs. He’d point to what he wanted and I authored it in a pile behind us. Finally, he pulled out his laptop and showed me a picture of a large round saw blade. Then I jumped it all back to the lumber mill. It was too late to talk to Paula but hopefully I could catch Ruby at home before she goes to sleep.

  Lu and I portaled into the library, Lu wanted us to take a bath.

  “Lu you were born on a farm right?”

  “Yeah I was, do you want me to take over a farm?”

  “No, but Juliet is going to finish out the week, then we need new application takers, do you think your experience on the farm would help. Juliet says she’ll bring old MacDonald, he is a very good farmer according to Juliet, actually her mentor.”

  “If that’s what you need Rose, I’ll be happy to do it.”

  “What about the pub though Lu?”

  “I got Mastat to fill in for me, hungry people are more important than singing in a pub Rose.”

  “Thanks Lu, I have to go see Draco, I’ll be in a little while.”

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  “Don’t stay up too late Rose, I love you and tomorrow will be another long day.”

  “I love you Lu.”

  I walked down to Draco’s lair and knocked and he answered almost immediately. He must be as excited about this as I was.

  “Come in Rose, I thought you’d be here hours ago.

  “Yeah me too, but everyone needed something from me at the site and I couldn’t say no they were all doing this stuff for me as a favor.”

  “Well it’s not like you are doing this for your benefit. What do you want me to do tomorrow, not that we are not making magical fields. Would you take Opal and go with McCracken, they are going to advertise on the road in a stage wagon I made for them. The cartel’s lawyer came to see me yesterday, he was vague but threatening. I just think they’d be less likely to start trouble if they see there is a dragon with them.”

  “Sure I’ll talk to McCracken in the morning and see if we can’t get Opal a part in the show. Now tell me all about this magic field method.”

  So I explained it as Nyx had explained it to me. Then he asked for a demonstration, so I did as Nyx had told me I imagined the magic around me, I was trying to direct it all to a spot a meter from my head, it’d worked before so I knew it would work again, I got out my imaginary arms and started to form a ball then I pulled my arms back and swept them in towards the ball, adding more and more magic. I opened my eyes and I had a huge ball that covered the lair.

  “Rose we need more space, let’s go down into the tower's forest, that didn’t tire you out at all?”

  “No Draco not even a little bit, I don’t think I used any of my own magic, it was all gathered from the tower, I’m just imagining forming a magical ball with imaginary arms, it’s slow gathering the magic compared with using your own, but Nyx wasn’t slow, she snapped her fingers and I just watched the magical field form, in about a second, she’d made a field it would have taken us months to form.”

  We walked down and Draco tried it out, I talked him through it and nothing was happening at first but I kept telling him over and over, imagine. Maybe all magic is just contained in the imagination. I’ll leave that for Sparky and Draco to figure out. Eventually he got it, I told him I saw it forming then the magic seemed to be rushing in, he completely covered the interior of the tower. Then I watched him draw the magic into himself. He was using the magic field to recharge himself.

  “Rose it’s amazing, I was around thirty percent magic, now I’m at one hundred percent. Even if that was the only application, which it’s not, this is a complete game changer for me. I can use ninety percent of my magic then ten minutes later, do it all over again. Just remember not to say a word to anyone, until Sparky gets back, I’m sure he won’t want anyone else to know, it’d make them a target.”

  “Now I begin to understand Nyx, awesome magical abilities, I always thought it was some special demon magic, with special spells. She’s like a bibliomancer but in the real world. She imagines something, and with the awesome amount of magic she has access to she changes reality to meet her desires. She could destroy worlds if she wanted to. I have to assume that all demons who are magicians can do the same thing. The storytellers have been lying about demons the whole time Rose. You have to write a story with a demon hero.”

  “That might be difficult, without describing their magic system.”

  “Just make up a special magical organ in their chest that lets them gather all ambient magic in an area and then use it all at once. That way even if a magician reads the story, they won’t pay attention to the magic because they don’t have the special organ. When in reality, the special organ is in your head, your brain.”

  I walked down to Mossbeard’s room at six am and knocked.

  “Come in.”

  “Mossbeard I’m so sorry to come so early but I need help.”

  “Rose don’t worry about it, I used to work eighteen hour days at a job that I hated, now I work eight hours when we aren’t in crisis mode at a job that I love. What can I help with?”

  “We need to jump and create a pair of portals for the farmers who will be living off world until their farms are completed.”

  With that we jumped to my Hilltop World uninhabited until today when thirty two families would be moving in. I authored eight buildings. Each building contained four townhouses each with four bedrooms, living room, kitchen and baths. The building also contained one communal kitchen and dining/meeting room large enough for all four families. These were identical to the building that the gnomes would begin building today.

  I was done before Mossbeard, but I didn’t have long to wait before his drawing was done. We jumped back to the tower for Opal to activate. Then we portaled to the site. Where Mossbeard got to work on another portal. I explained to the families that until their new homes were built they’d be using these portals to get back and forth to the farms daily but very soon they’d be living on the farm itself.

  I told the farmers to be sure to portal back here to the farm by ten am, as seeds and equipment would be here by then. They could start their first planting. I encouraged the senior farmers to instruct their juniors on best practices. We’ll be right back, I told them as we portaled back to the tower to have Opal activate our farm portal.

  Through this portal the four farms would deliver their produce to the vendors. After all thirty two families had a wallet they started portalling to Hilltop World. Then Juliet handed me a list of seed and farm equipment. I jumped to Juliet's World and authored everything on Juliet’s list then jumped it back to the farms.

  Meanwhile Mossbeard went back to the store to paint both of the drawings he’d made that morning. After I had Juliet look over what I’d authored and she confirmed that’s all the farmers need to get their first seeds into the ground.

  The gnomes had already begun building barns on the first four farms. It was decided to prioritize barns over houses, people could easily move through portals, we had no idea how a horse would react to stepping from one world to another. I didn’t want to take a chance of someone being hurt to find out. So Juliet had arranged to rent horses from the closest stables so the fields could be plowed.

  I portaled to the store, took Mossbeard’s paintings to Juliet's World, authored them dry and jumped to the tower, caught Opal and Draco just before they were to portal to the theater. Opal activated the paintings for me. I jumped to Juliet’s world and made thirty two copies of each of the activated portal paintings and jumped back to the store. Mossbeard would take them to each of the farms so each farm could portal home from their own farm even without the wallet, given to the primary farmer of the family.

  Then my day at the store began.