Welp, here we go, as promised--more of the Boon Point stuff.

-Plum

38 – Planting a Castle

“Here,” Andy said, skillfully drawing the Greater Axiom of Passage. As always, the glowing sigil rapidly took shape, blazing with magenta mana. This time, considering the distance he wanted to traverse was relatively short, the passage opened quickly, too. “Step through, and we’ll be at the gate.”

Lucy looked from him to the weird, shifting opening in the air before him. It was like a tunnel into shadow and mist, but he didn’t think it looked frightening. Its blurred lines were backed by an inviting glow—warm hues of pink and yellow and blue. “That was quick!” she said, stepping toward it. “Just walk through?”

“Yeah.” Andy wasn’t worried about the passage suddenly collapsing. As far as his passages went, this one was very stable, so he took her hand and pulled her in behind him. “It’ll last a couple of minutes. Come on.” He took a few steps forward, felt Lucy following behind, and then he stepped out into the cool night air and the bright glow of magical light.

Squinting against the sudden glare, he saw a crowd beyond the gate. High in the air, blazing like a miniature star, was a ball of yellow-white light. When he saw Denise at the head of the crowd, Andy had a feeling she was responsible for the magical illumination.

“That’s Denise,” Lucy confirmed. “She made smaller versions of that light on our trip out to the Dondalli.”

“Let’s see what’s going on,” Andy said, jogging toward the crowd. Everyone was spreading out, lining up along the edge of the mesa so they could see out, and when Andy drew close, he understood why. Clouds had rolled in at some point, so the stars and moon weren’t any help, but Denise’s magical light cast a pale glow into the black desert night. It stretched just far enough for everyone to see the sandstone wall that had risen out of the earth.

“It’s about a quarter of a mile out,” Eduardo said by way of greeting, smiling at Andy. “And it goes all the way around the mesa.”

“How high is it?” Lucy asked.

“Hard to say from here, but Tucker and Jace and some of the militia are on their way out.” He pointed down into the desert, and Andy saw the group—a line of lanterns about halfway to the wall. “I think it’s at least twenty feet high.”

“That’s a hell of a construction,” Andy said softly, trying to imagine the amount of stone that had gone into the wall. “If it’s a half-mile in diameter—”

“More than that,” Eduardo said. “It’s about a fourth of a mile from the edge of the mesa, but the mesa’s about half a mile across.” He shrugged. “Eh, those are all estimates based on me counting my strides. Anyway, it’s a good-sized area.”

“So, that’s part of our settlement now?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” someone else said.

Andy smiled, looked down at Lucy, and shrugged. “Seems good to me.”

“I wonder if there are gates?” someone—Bernice, Andy thought—asked.

Andy peered straight ahead, down the washed-out dirt road. He knew that if he changed his class, he’d be able to see the wall better. As it was, he couldn’t quite make out enough detail to tell if there was any sort of gate—or even a battlement. He thought he saw darker shadows by the road, but it was just too dim. “Can anyone see better at night?” he asked. “I don’t want to change my class.”

“Omar, but he’s with Jace and the others,” Eduardo replied.

“I can see,” Denise said, and Andy felt a small surge of mana as a shimmering glass-like circle appeared in the air before her. “It only lasts a minute or two, but if I look through this, I can see…” She trailed off, reaching up to grasp the edges of her magical window, turning it left and right. “There are stairs leading up to the top of the wall! I see at least one gate, right where the road meets the wall. It looks like it’s made of heavy wood, but it’s strapped with metal.”

“This is great!” Eduardo said, throwing an arm over Violet’s shoulders.

“The only thing is, that’s a hell of a big perimeter to defend,” a gravelly voice commented. Andy turned to see Frank Dunlap, the War Medic, coming to stand behind him. “We’ll need a bigger militia to defend it, too.”

“Well, any armies coming to siege will have to spread themselves out or target one part of the wall, too,” Eduardo replied.

“True, but we’ll still need patrols all the way around—” Frank started to reply, but Andy shook his head, interrupting.

“We can see in every direction from up there.” He turned and pointed to the watchtower. “As long as we have some defenders ready to respond, we can direct them to where the trouble is.”

Frank nodded slowly. “Good point. I guess that’s something we need to work out though—who’s on duty and where they ought to be stationed so they can get to the wall quickly.”

Andy smiled, gripping Frank’s shoulder. “I’ll let Omar know you’re interested, because I agree; we need some folks organizing stuff like that.”

To his delight, Frank didn’t shrink from the implied duty. He nodded and gruffly replied, “Good. I’ve got some ideas.”

“Right on. Let me know if he doesn’t get with you in a day or two because it’s probably my fault. I’ve got a lot going on.”

“Speaking of,” Lucy said, tugging on his arm. “Want to do the citadel?”

Andy nodded, turned back to Frank to excuse himself, but the old vet was already pushing his way through to the trail. Apparently, he was going to head out toward the wall. Lucy tugged his arm again, and he moved away from the crowd, following her before he got caught up in another conversation. He was more than happy to just plant the citadel and let the magic get started, but there was one problem. “Where should I put it?”

“There’s a lot of open space on the north end of the mesa,” Lucy suggested.

They were back to the gate by then, and Andy stopped, shaking his head. “The System said it would use spatial magic to expand without impacting the surroundings. Maybe we should take advantage of that. We could put it right at the center of the settlement.”

Lucy frowned and turned to look down the lane. “Where would that be? The Square?”

Andy shook his head, picturing the old dog park before the trailer park had become a mesa. “Nah, that wasn’t the center. It would be more at the junction where the second two lanes split off from this central one.” He nodded down at the path under their feet.

Lucy started walking, and he followed her, heading toward the overhanging mesquite canopy. “Let’s look around there. I don’t think it’ll work.”

“Why?”

“Because even if it makes its own land, it’ll block the flow of traffic. People will have to walk around it to go in any direction.”

Andy stopped short, nodding. “That’s a good point.” He gestured to the grassy meadow north of the trail. “Let’s walk around to the north side, then. I was thinking we might want to avoid putting it there because of all the food-bearing plants that were growing, but if it makes its own space, it won’t kill off any of those.”

Lucy nodded, and the two of them walked off the path, through the knee-high grass, past the watchtower, and then skirted the thickest part of the mesquite grove, working their way to the open field that bordered the northern edge of the grove, all the way to the adobe wall that ran along the edge of the mesa.

When they stood there, looking back toward the grove, it seemed to Andy that there was about an acre of open ground. It wasn’t just dry brush and grass, though; hundreds of little shrubs and plants grew on the north side of the mesa, most of which were edible or bore edible fruit—the result of their Forager’s Bounty boon.

“I like the idea of putting the citadel on this side,” Lucy said, “because it would be on the opposite side from the Waterhouse—two big structures to balance out the settlement.”

“True…” Andy said, though he hesitated.

“What is it?”

“I feel like I ought to ask Tucker about it.”

Lucy sighed, shaking her head as she looked up at the stars. “I’ll tell you what he’ll say: ‘A citadel? That sounds cool. You want to put it there? Hmm, yeah, that would be cool.’”

Andy laughed. “You’re probably right. He generally goes with the flow.”

“Someday, there will be better roads up here. There will probably be one that goes around the edge of the mesa, and ones that run right through the center—east-west and north-south. If you have your citadel here, it’ll be easy for people to get to it.”

Andy closed his eyes, imagining the top of the mesa the way she described. Slowly, he began to nod. “And, here, it’s not right in Madi’s grove. I’m not saying I wouldn’t want it to be, but I don’t know if it would interfere, especially as we continue to upgrade it.”

Lucy nodded. “That’s a good point.”

They were standing with their backs to the adobe wall, only about ten feet from the edge of the mesa, and Andy looked down at his feet. “I think I’ll put it right here. If it’s going to make its own space, I might as well capitalize on that.”

Lucy arched an eyebrow. “Grow the edge of the mesa?”

“We’ll see how it works, but that’s what I’m picturing.” He held out his hand, palm up, and Lucy plopped the little figurine onto it. “Here goes,” he said, squatting and gently twisting the base of the figurine into the hard soil. Satisfied, he pushed a little mana into the object.

**Attention! You’ve activated the settlement boon, Basic Citadel. If you continue, the citadel will grow to its full proportions, using spatial magic to expand the ground beneath its footprint. Do you wish to continue?**

“Yes,” Andy said. He felt a surge of mana unlike anything he’d experienced before. It was like a volcano had suddenly erupted before him, but there wasn’t any heat or explosion. He wasn’t knocked down, and he didn’t even feel the ground tremble. The rush of mana lasted a split second, and then Andy found himself staring at a massive stone wall made of dark gray blocks.

He wasn’t a rock expert, but Andy thought the stones might be basalt; they seemed too dark to be granite, and they definitely weren’t sandstone or marble. He looked left and right, saw the wall continue, and then looked up, grunting in surprise when he saw crenellations some twenty feet above his head. “So sudden,” he muttered, turning to his left to walk toward the distant corner of the structure.

When he did so, he realized he was still beside the adobe wall—only a bit more than five feet high—and he could see over it to the edge of the plateau. “I don’t even understand,” he muttered, trying to figure out how the citadel could create its own space and still be inside the wall.

Distantly, he heard Lucy’s voice calling out, “Andy?”

“Coming!” he yelled, picking up his pace to a jog. When he reached the corner of the citadel, he turned to see Lucy jogging his way.

“It was just…there!” she called, as they drew near each other.

“I know! Weird.” He pointed to the shrubs and bushes growing nearby. “It’s like it squeezed in, but it didn’t move the ground at all—none of the bushes are further apart than they were.”

“So weird!” she agreed.

“Did you see an entrance?”

“Yeah.” She pointed. “Around the corner.”

Together, they jogged to the next corner, and when Andy stood there, looking over the meadow to the trees, it felt like it was just as far as before—like the citadel hadn’t taken up any space. “So weird!” he said again.

“Look!” Lucy pointed, and he saw a stretch of flagstones leading away from the center of the citadel. It only extended about ten yards, but Andy supposed it would be easy to tie a new road into it. He and Lucy walked up to the paved section of ground and looked at the open gateway. It was flanked by two five-by-ten-foot, iron-strapped wooden gates. They were open, and he could see through into a broad, cobbled courtyard.

“I wonder why it was so different from the other buildings we got. I mean, I expected that little figurine to grow,” Andy said, stepping into the gatehouse. Holes in the ceiling made him shudder, as he imagined they were designed for arrows or maybe hot oil to be deployed against invaders. “Murder holes,” he muttered.

“I gave up trying to explain the System a long time ago,” Lucy replied.

The courtyard wasn’t huge, just about the size of a basketball court. Steps led up to the citadel proper—a squat, two-story building made from the same dark stones as the wall. A heavy wooden door, large enough to drive a compact car through, sat at the top of the stairs. In the right-hand corner of the courtyard, some steps led up to the ramparts, and a doorway opened into the gatehouse.

Andy and Lucy spent some time exploring the citadel, which turned out to be remarkably simple. Barracks were built into the gatehouse, complete with twenty simple beds with straw mattresses. Andy figured they’d replace those right away. The bottom floor of the keep portion was made up of a single massive room with a fireplace. He and Lucy agreed that it served the basic function of the citadel—a place for the populace to shelter in times of need.

The upper story held an empty study with six built-in bookcases, four smallish bedrooms, a communal bathroom, and then, at the far end of the hallway, a larger bedroom. That was it. Other than beds with straw mattresses, the only other furnishings were the empty bookcases. “Not exactly a royal palace,” Andy said with a chuckle as they finished their tour and made their way back downstairs.

“It’s the basic citadel,” Lucy replied, also laughing. “It’s fine, though. I mean, there’s more room than your tiny house, and you can give that to someone in need now.”

“You don’t think anyone’s going to fight me about moving in here?”

“Nope. Besides, there are some extra rooms. You can offer them to some other people, like Omar.”

Andy knew better than to suggest Lucy take one; hadn’t they just talked about them each having their own space? When they emerged into the courtyard, she yawned, and Andy looked down at her, smiling. “Tired?”

“Honestly, yes. I didn’t sleep a lot when we were with the Dondalli, and then there was Gavax, and…” She trailed off, shrugging. “Want to meet up for breakfast? I can help you start moving your stuff over.”

“Yeah, sure. I have to get up early to open the passage for the team going back to the Gavax Collective, anyway.” Andy’s eyes flew wide. “And the Huorn could show up anytime now!”

She nodded. “And then there’s the Trade Beacon.”

“Oh!” Andy cried. “I think the System might still give me a reward for how I handled the Children.”

Lucy laughed. “And you need to think about your Improvement Points.”

Andy collapsed onto the top step, cradling his head in his hands. “Considering we still have enemies all around us, I think I’ll be up late tonight.”

She grabbed his wrist and tugged him to his feet. “Come on, then. Go back to your tiny house; this place isn’t ready to be lived in yet.”